366 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVIII. No. 455. 



qiiile as abundantly as it did that year at 

 San Pedro. During the last days of July 

 the water of the ocean at Coronado extend- 

 ing from the shore out to a mile or more 

 took on the rusty color, increasing at times 

 and in places to almost that of old blood 

 clot, with which we became so familiar at 

 San Pedro two years ago. This year, how- 

 ever, we observed nothing of the fatality 

 among other animals, as an accompaniment 

 of the visitation, that occurred in 1901. 

 It is not certain, however, that this latter 

 phenomenon was absent, for we did not 

 have the same opportunities for observation 

 this year that we had before. This year 

 we did no dredging in the affected region 

 and consequently had no chance to see 

 how the bottom organisms were affected. 

 Furthermore, there was no high wind this 

 year to drive the Gonyaulax on to the 

 shore and to east up the dead of other 

 animals, had they existed. 



As mentioned above, the same kind of 

 work will be carried on again for two weeks 

 during the Christmas recess of the univer- 

 sity. This much we are now able to do 

 toward realizing the plan of distributing 

 the survey operations throughout the year. 



It gives me genuine pleasure to con- 

 elude with an acknowledgment of our ob- 

 ligations to the citizens of San Diego for 

 having made the work possible this year. 

 The whole expense of moving the labora- 

 tory from San Pedro and of fitting up the 

 new one at Coronado, and likewise all the 

 expense of carrying on the work excepting 

 for the equipment that was taken from the 

 university, was provided by the citizens. 

 A committee of the chamber of commerce 

 of that city had the matter in charge, and 

 such a duty was certainly never more effi- 

 ciently discharged by any similar body of 

 men. 



Wm. E. Ritter. 



University of Calitoknia, 

 August U, 1903. 



SCIEyTIFIC BOOKS. 

 THE COLLECTED PAPERS OF ROWL.\KD AND FITZ- 

 GERALD. 



The Physical Papers of Henry Augustus 

 Rowland. Collected for publication by a 

 Committee of the Faculty of the Univer- 

 sity. Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins Press. 

 1902. 8vo. Pp. xi + 704. 

 The Scientific Writings of the Late George 

 Francis FitzGerald. Collected and edited 

 with a historical introduction by Joseph 

 Larmor. Dublin University Press Series. 

 Dublin, Hodges, Figgis & Co., Ltd.; Lon- 

 don, Longmans, Green & Co. 1902. 8vo. 

 Pp. Ixiv + 576. 



No more fitting memorials could have been 

 produced in honor of the two distinguished 

 physicists, whose untimely deaths occurred in 

 the early months of 1901, than these admi- 

 rable volumes issued by the Johns Hopkins 

 Press and by the Dublin University Press 

 respectively. The first duty of the living, 

 therefore, is to acknowledge our deep in- 

 debtedness to Professor Ames and to Profess- 

 or Larmor on whom the burden of the work 

 fell in collecting and editing these widely scat- 

 tered papers and in bringing them into readily 

 accessible forms in the short space of two 

 years. They have thus at once rendered hom- 

 age to the heroes who have gone before and 

 encouragement to the hosts who follow in the 

 arduous march of physical science. The de- 

 sirability of republication of the scattered 

 papers of eminent men of science is now 

 pretty generally recognized, and the prompt 

 issue of the papers of Rowland and Fitz- 

 Gerald sets an example which should be 

 widely followed. 



The nearly simultaneous appearance of 

 these two volumes tends to emphasize a 

 remarkable similarity in the careers of Row- 

 land and FitzGerald. Each was the son of a: 

 clergyman; each was a physicist by nature in 

 spite of all educational infiuences that might 

 have led his thoughts along other lines; each 

 was in the van of the great progress in phys- 

 ical science of the last thirty years; each was 

 a vigorous champion of the laboratory 

 method in scientific studies ; each advocated in 

 the strongest terms the merits of pure re- 



