152 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVIII. No. 970 



ciate secretary of tlie American Association 

 to further the interests of the association in 

 the south and to promote the meeting to be 

 held next winter at Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. 

 Ogden will enter upon his duties the first of 

 next October. 



Mr. F. p. Gulliver, as geographer of the 

 Chestnut Tree Blight Commission of Pennsyl- 

 vania, is studying the relation of soil and 

 climate to the growth of chestnut trees and 

 the spread of the blight. 



Me. O, E. Jennings, of the Carnegie Mu- 

 seum, Pittsburgh, is engaged in a botanical ex- 

 pedition to the north of Lake Superior to 

 study the ecological distribution of plants. 



Professor W. M. Davis, of Harvard IJni- 

 versity, delivered two lectures before the stu- 

 dents in geology and geography at the summer 

 session of Columbia University, on " The 

 Mountains of the Great Basin " and " Princi- 

 ples of Geographical Descriptions." Professor 

 G. A. J. Cole, director of the Geological Sur- 

 vey of Ireland, addressed them on " Ireland, 

 the Outpost of Europe." 



DiEECTOR Charles E. Thorne, of the Ohio 

 Agricultural Experiment Station, gave an ad- 

 dress on July 15, at the University of Illinois, 

 on " The Eolation of Cattle Feeding to Soil 

 Fertility." The occasion was the attendance 

 of 250 cattlemen to inspect the baby beeves 

 that had just completed a 210-day feeding 

 experiment. 



Dr. Egbert von Lendeefeld, professor of 

 zoology and director of the Zoological Insti- 

 tute in Prague, has died at the age of fifty-six 

 years. Dr. von Lenderfeld's numerous and 

 valuable publications in zoology, especially 

 those on the morphology and classification of 

 sponges, are well known. At the time of his 

 death he was rector of the German University 

 in Prague. 



Civil service examinations are announced 

 as follows: chief in the Office of Information, 

 Department of Agriculture, "Washington, at 

 $2,500 a year; bacteriologist at a salary 

 ranging from $1,800 to $2,000 a year in the 

 New York food and drug inspection labora- 



tory, Bureau of Chemistry, Department of 

 Agriculture. 



The minister of public instruction of Ar- 

 gentina has authorized the preparation of an 

 expedition from the National Observatory at 

 Cordoba to observe the total solar eclipse 

 which will occur on August 20-21, 1914. The 

 expedition will be composed of three members 

 of the observatory staff, with an extensive 

 equipment of instruments and will proceed to 

 a point (as near to the central line as pos- 

 sible) in southern Eussia, not far from the 

 Black Sea. It is expected that the expedition 

 will be joined by astronomers from the Berlin, 

 Potsdam and Koenigsberg observatories. 



Secretary Houston has announced that 

 hereafter the Department of Agriculture will 

 send a weekly letter to the correspondents of 

 the department, giving the latest agricultural 

 information of value to the farmer. The let- 

 ters will treat of crop conditions and prices, 

 the discovery of new plant or animal pests, 

 pure food decisions, and those which affect 

 users of irrigated land and the national for- 

 ests, and any other work of the department 

 which can benefit the farmer. The letter is 

 to be sent weekly, so that the news may reach 

 the farmers promptlj'. The Crop Reporter, a 

 monthly publication which has been issued by 

 the department for some years past, is to be 

 discontinued. Secretary Houston having de- 

 cided that it reached the farmers too late to 

 be of any practical use. 



The first annual meeting of editors of pub- 

 lications of agricultural colleges in the middle 

 west was held at the University of Ulinois on 

 July 10. Eepresentatives of sis states met 

 and discussed informally the problems in con- 

 nection with the gathering, editing and pub- 

 lication of agricultural material. It was voted 

 to hold a session in 1914, to which many other 

 states will be invited. The association elected 

 Dr. B. E. Powell, of Illinois, executive secre- 

 tary to make necessary arrangements for the 

 next meeting. 



Following is the New York Botanical Gar- 

 den's program of late summer lectures, which 

 will be delivered in the museum building, 



