July 7, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



13 



bust of his father, Alphonse de Candolle, in 

 remembrance of the constant friendship be- 

 tween his father and Asa Gray, The bust is 

 by Hugues Bovy. 



The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard Uni- 

 versity announces the publication of the first 

 volume of " The Bradley Bibliography," a 

 guide to the literature of woody plants, in- 

 cluding books, and articles in the proceedings 

 of learned societies, and in scientific and pop- 

 ular journals, published in all languages to 

 the end of the nineteenth century, prepared 

 at the Arnold Arboretum by Mr. Alfred Reh- 

 der, under the direction of Professor Charles 

 Sprague Sargent. The work will extend to 

 between 4,000 and 5,000 quarto two-column 

 pages and will consist of five volumes, as fol- 

 lows: I., Dendrology — General; II., Dendrol- 

 ogy — Taxonomic Arrangement ; III., Eco- 

 nomic Products and Uses of Woody Plants — 

 Arboriculture; IV., Forestry; V., Lidex of 

 Authors and Titles. 



The Geographical Magazine gives some de- 

 tails in regard to the piercing of the Lotsch- 

 berg in the Bernese Alps, completed on March 

 31 by the junction of the galleries driven 

 from the north and south which marks an 

 important step towards improved communica- 

 tions across the Alpine barrier of central 

 Europe. The project forms the natural com- 

 plement of the piercing of the Simplon, in 

 supplying a further link in the future trunk 

 line of communication from northwestern to 

 southern Europe, besides giving to Berne (in 

 the interests of which city the scheme was 

 first set on foot) its needed access to the more 

 westerly of the two great international routes 

 across Switzerland, between which it has 

 hitherto lain isolated. The northern entrance 

 to the tunnel, at Kandersteg, is reached by a 

 prolongation of the line up the Kander Valley 

 from Spiez on the Lake of Thun, and the 

 southern, at Goppenstein, is linked with the 

 Simplon at Brieg by a section descending the 

 Lotschenthal at the Rhone Valley. The total 

 length is 14,536 meters (9 miles), or but 

 slightly shorter than the St. Gothard, though 

 over 5,000 meters shorter than the Simplon, 

 these being the only two existing tunnels by 



which it is exceeded. The length is nearly 

 half a mile greater than was provided by the 

 original scheme, a departure from the straight 

 line having been necessitated by the catas- 

 trophe of 1908, which flooded the workings 

 and entailed the loss of twenty-five lives, rend- 

 ering nearly a mile of the boring useless. In 

 spite of this delay, the piercing of the moun- 

 tain, begun on October 15, 1906, occupied less 

 than four and a half years, the rate of progress 

 per day being greater than in the case of any 

 of the previous great alpine tunnels, though 

 closely approached in that of the Simplon. 

 While not in any way affecting the communi- 

 cations between Paris and the south, and only 

 in a minor degree those of the Rhine and 

 southwest Germany, the new route will effect 

 an appreciable shortening of the journey frora 

 London (and northeastern France) to Milan 

 and other parts of Italy by the Calais-Belfort 

 route, particularly when the projected tunnel, 

 4 miles long, under the Jura north of the 

 Lake of Bienne has been completed; the sav- 

 ing will be most noticeable in the case of 

 Genoa. The date fijxed for the opening of the 

 Lotschberg route, on which electric traction 

 will be used, is May 1, 1913. 



That the sulphur in our soils, hitherto con- 

 sidered of little importance to the fertility of 

 the same, is of vast importance, and is also 

 being rapidly depleted due to improper meth- 

 ods of agriculture, is the gist of a bulletin 

 published by the University of Wisconsin, 

 embodying the results of experiments eon- 

 ducted by Professor E. B. Hart and Mr. W. H. 

 Peterson, of the department of agricultural 

 chemistry. Sulphur has been considered rela- 

 tively unimportant as compared with phos- 

 phorus and nitrogen content of soils. Tests 

 made by Professor Hart and Mr. Peterson 

 show, however, that low results were due to 

 the analytical methods employed by the early 

 investigators, and according to more accurate 

 determinations the sulphur content of our 

 soils is of vast importance. Continuous cul- 

 tivation, in connection with insuiEcient fer- 

 tilization, annually results in a heavy loss of 

 sulphur. Combined with the losses of sul- 



