418 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLII. No. 1082 



2. The number of men of 50 years of age and 

 over offering whole-time war service (total, 447). 



3. The number of men from 40 to 49 offering 

 whole-time war service (total, 436). 



4. The number of men of 40 and under offering 

 whole-time war service (total, 633). 



5. The number of men of 40 and under not on 

 whole-time war service, nor offering to undertake 

 it (total, 6,555 up to date). 



From these figures it will be seen that there 

 are approximately 6,555 men of military age 

 not at present engaged in war service; of these 

 the services of about one third are said to be 

 needed. 



The Berlin correspondent of the Journal of 

 the American Medical Association reports that 

 the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for the Study of 

 the Physiology and Pathology of the Working- 

 man has now begun its work. Researches will 

 be made in the physiology, pathology and hy- 

 giene of labor (work), the mental and physical 

 welfare of the workingman. The relationship 

 of labor to the age of the workingman, the 

 sex, the race, nourishment, environment, cloth- 

 ing, etc., will be investigated. The physio- 

 logic chemistry department will investigate 

 particularly the physiology of nutrition in 

 order to determine the influence of food on the 

 working capacity of the workingman and the 

 influence of alcohol on muscle energy. The 

 statistical division will approach the question 

 from another point of view including a study 

 of food and food elements, animal as well as 

 vegetable, the size of a family as bearing on 

 the nutrition, the difference in eating in the 

 city and in the country among the poor and 

 among the rich. The psychologic division will 

 investigate the influence of labor in its rela- 

 tionship to psychathenia, etc. The work done 

 by others in similar fields will place these 

 studies on a definite basis. The well-knovra 

 Taylor system has done much to further these 

 studies; for instance, it is known that severe 

 physical labor causes the blood to leave the 

 viscera and appear in increased quantity in the 

 extremities. Physical tire, on the other hand, 

 produces the opposite. Therefore deleterious 

 effects may be prevented by regulating the 

 work either by frequent periods of rest or by 



changing the kind of work so that other muscle 

 groups may be brought into play. It is the 

 aim of the institute to investigate all the 

 phases of this question thoroughly so that the 

 results may prove beneficial to the working- 

 man as well as to his employer. Tuberculosis 

 will come in for a large share of study, espe- 

 cially with regard to the etiologic relation- 

 ship of poor housing conditions in the cause 

 and spread of tuberculosis. The alcohol ques- 

 tion, female and child labor, etc., will be inves- 

 tigated. 



The finest and most accurate maps of the 

 United States are those made by the United 

 States Geological Survey. This branch of 

 the government service prints more than 3,000 

 maps a day, or about a million a year, most of 

 which are sold to the public directly from 

 Washington. Book and stationery concerns 

 in the larger cities of course handle these 

 maps, but heretofore there has been no way in 

 which the inhabitants of the small tovnis 

 throughout the country could get them except 

 by sending to Washington. Now, however, 

 postmasters in tovsms and villages have the 

 permission of the Post Office Department to 

 handle these maps. When the Geological Sur- 

 vey prints a new map it sends a sample copy 

 to the postmasters in the area covered, with the 

 suggestion that they tack it up in a conspicu- 

 ous place, where everyone calling for mail can 

 see it, and order a small stock for sale to those 

 who wish to buy the map. This saves the pur- 

 chaser the annoyance of sending to the Geo- 

 logical Survey and waiting until the map is 

 received from Washington and also saves the 

 expense of postage. The postmaster himseK 

 receives a small commission on each map sold. 

 Many active postmasters are handling the 

 maps, and that their fellow-citizens appreciate 

 the accommodation of being able to buy gov- 

 ernment maps at the post office is shown by 

 the number sold in this way. The record of 

 maps so sold shows that a postmaster in Minne- 

 sota heads the list so far, having sold 125 

 maps the first month he handled them. Only 

 postmasters in regions that have been recently 

 mapped have been asked to handle the maps. 



