240 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XX. No. 503. 



cal practitioner, medical teacher, editor of 

 the Journal of the American Medical Asso- 

 ciation and secretary general of the execu- 

 tive committee of the International Medical 

 Congress. During this severe strain he was 

 stricken with complete right-sided paral- 

 ysis, from which he fortunately soon re- 

 covered, but which left him with a slight 

 weakness of the affected side. This illness, 

 although so serious, was for him only an 

 incident. With his returning strength he 

 again took up his burdens and worked on 

 with energy, patience and success. In this 

 he exemplified his dominating character- 

 istics. Whatever he did was done with all 

 his might, and here we have the secret 

 of his life : it was his strength of character, 

 his physical and mental efficiency, his 

 singleness of purpose, his transcendent al- 

 truism that made him a so potent factor 

 in the development of so many of our use- 

 ful institutions. 



With the cessation of his works, and the 



extinction of the light of his life we have 



lost an active agent and an unwavering 



beacon in the upward trend to better things. 



Frank S. Johnson. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS. 

 Observations and Investigations made at the 

 Blue Hill Meteorological Ohservaiory, 

 Massachusetts, U. S. A., in the Tears 1901 

 and 1902, under the direction of A. Law- 

 rence Eotch. Annals of the Astronomical 

 Observatory of Harvard College, Vol. 

 XLIII., Part in. 4to. 1903. Pp. 115- 

 239. Pis. IV. 



The Blue Hill volumes of the Annals of the 

 Harvard College Ohservatory are always sure 

 of a warm welcome at the hands of meteorolo- 

 gists, because of the importance and the high 

 quality of the results which they contain. The 

 present volume is no exception to this general 

 rule. If there be any who do not know what 

 meteorology owes to Mr. Eotch, such persons 

 will find a simple statement of the reason for 

 this great indebtedness in the following words, 

 quoted from the introduction to the volume 



before us, which is signed by Mr. Eotch : ' All 

 the expenses of the observatory continue to be 

 paid by the undersigned, except the cost of 

 publishing the investigations and observa- 

 tions.' 



The introduction makes fitting mention of 

 the death of Mr. A. E. Sweetland, the young- 

 est member of the Blue Hill staii, whose name 

 has already appeared in the columns of Sci- 

 ence in connection with investigations car- 

 ried on by him at the observatory. A fire- 

 proof addition to the observatory has been 

 built, containing a library and a storage room 

 for kites, and certain other much-needed addi- 

 tions to the older building have been made. 

 It may be noted, in passing, that the total 

 cost of these additions and alterations 

 amounted to $7,000, and was paid by Mr. 

 Eotch. 



Besides maintaining the routine observa- 

 tions and automatic records at the summit and 

 base stations, the chief investigation carried 

 on at Blue Hill Observatory has been the ex- 

 ploration of the air by means of kites. The 

 observations obtained by means of kites from 

 August, 1894, to February, 1897, were pub- 

 lished and discussed in Vol. XLIL, Part I., 

 Appendix B, of the Annals of the Harvard 

 College Ohservatory. In the present volume 

 the kite observations, together with the simul- 

 taneous ground observations, from March, 

 1897, to the close of the year 1902, are pub- 

 lished in full (Appendix C, by H. H. Clayton), 

 while the discussion of these observations, 

 which is eagerly awaited, is reserved for a 

 later volume. Since December, 1901, kite 

 flights from Blue Hill have been made once a 

 month, when possible, in cooperation with 

 similar ascents of kites and balloons in Europe, 

 carried out under the auspices of the Inter- 

 national Conmiittee for Scientific Aeronautics, 

 of which committee Mr. Eotch is the Ameri- 

 can member. The results of the kite flights 

 made from the deck of a steamer during a 

 trip across the North Atlantic, reference to 

 which has been made in these columns, are 

 given in Table XIV. It will be remembered 

 by readers of this journal that, as the result 

 of his success in flying kites from the steamer 

 on this trip, and previously from a tow-boat 



