422 



SCIENCE 



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



At the sixty-third annual meeting of the 

 American Pharmaceutical Association, which 

 was held in San Prancisco during the week of 

 June 9, the president of the association, Mr. 

 Caswell A. Mayo, of New York, announced 

 that Mr. Samuel W. Fairchild had agreed to 

 provide funds for a scholarship in pharmacy 

 paying $300 annually, to be awarded to an un- 

 dergraduate student by a commission composed 

 of the presidents of the American Pharmaceu- 

 tical Association, the American Conference of 

 Pharmaceutical Faculties, the National Asso- 

 ciation of Boards of Pharmacy, and the editor 

 of the Journal of the American Pharmaceu- 

 tical Association. 



Two new foundations are announced at 

 Leeds University — the "William Walker scholar- 

 ship, of the annual value of £90, for the scien- 

 tific study of leather with a view to its sub- 

 sequent application to industrial develop- 

 ment, and the William Walker Exhibition, for 

 instruction in the technology of coal and its 

 by-products. The new endowments are 

 founded in memory of the late Mr. William 

 Walker, of Whitehaven, by his widow and his 

 sons, Mr. Herbert W. Walker and Mr. Arthur 

 Walker. Both are primarily tenable at Leeds 

 by inhabitants of the Whitehaven and Bootle 

 districts, and the donors have placed £4,500 in 

 trust for the purpose. 



Pbofessoe Ivey p. Lewis, of the University 

 of Missouri, has become Miller professor of 

 biology and head of the school of biology at 

 the University of Virginia. 



At the Montana State College, R. H. Bogue, 

 formerly at the Massachusetts Agricultural 

 College, has been appointed assistant professor 

 of chemistry and geology; Henry M. Shea, 

 formerly of the South Dakota State College, 

 analyst of the food and drug laboratory, and 

 H. B. Poote, formerly of Oklahoma, instructor 

 in botany. 



Dr. Paul H. Dike has been appointed pro- 

 fessor of physics in Robert College, Constanti- 

 nople, to succeed Professor Manning, who 

 died last year. He sailed on the Greek line to 

 Piraeus on September 15 with his family, to- 

 gether with a number of the members of the 

 faculty of Robert College. The college is to 



open in spite of the war, and it is hoped that 

 the party will be able to get through without 

 much delay. The women and children will 

 await developments in Athens. 



DISCUSSION AND COBBESPONDENCE 



THE LAWS OP MOTION 



How well some of us remeniber and how 

 much some of us have heard of the days of 

 Thomson and Tait, and how satisfied we were 

 and are with what Thomson and Tait had to 

 say on this subject! In those days scarcely 

 any one understood the laws of motion, but 

 nowadays, thanks largely to the influence of 

 Thomson and Tait, the chief confusion is that 

 which rises from slightly different points of 

 view, mostly correct; and the laws of motion 

 now constitute the topic in the discussion of 

 which one pays the least attention to what 

 others say, and quite properly so. 



We do, however, believe that it is misleading 

 to speak of tlie fundamental equation of 

 dynamics. Given three bodies A, B and 0, 

 and three identifiable forces a, i and c. Let 

 the acceleration of each body due to each force 

 be observed, and let the results be as shown in 

 the accompanying table. 



TABLE OP OBSERVED ACCELERATIONS 



Bodies 



Forces 



The acceleration varies from body to body 

 for a given force, and from force to force for 

 a given body. These are two equally funda- 

 mental modes of variation, and corresponding 

 to them we have two equally fundamental laws 

 of variation; and these laws of variation are 

 entirely independent of the measurement of 

 force and mass. Let us suppose that the 

 above table has been extended so as to include 

 a great many different forces and a great many 

 different bodies, then a careful inspection of 



