582 
GEOPHYSICS: G. W. LITTLEHALES 
Proc. N. a. S. 
tions of temperature, salinity, gas content, and currents made as nearly 
as possible at the same instant at series of points or stations and through- 
out a network of lines distributed in the depths beneath a given area of 
the ocean, and repeated every three months have afforded the means of 
making synoptic charts which disclose the existence of bends or undula- 
tions like the waves formed on the boundary surface between water layers 
of different densities. It is the mathematical investigation of the varia- 
tions with time of the changing network of lines of equal values of the 
physical elements in their distribution in the depths that promises to in- 
troduce oceanography into the ranks of the exact sciences by enabling 
oceanographers, by mathematical laws, to predict effects from a few 
observations strategically placed. 
Conspicuous among the features of the resumption of American oceano- 
graphical operations, after the interruption occasioned by the exigencies 
of the late times, are the following: The International Ice Observation 
and Ice Patrol Service in the North Atlantic Ocean, employing the vessels 
of the United States Coast Guard under an arrangement by which the 
cost is shared proportionately by the nations participating in the London 
Conference of 1913, is engaged (coordinately with the primary duties of 
ascertaining the locations and progressive movements of the limiting 
lines of the regions in which icebergs and field ice exist in the vicinity of 
the Grand Bank of Newfoundland and the dissemination of the informa- 
tion so ascertained for the guidance and warning of navigators) in gather- 
ing an important accumulation of oceanographical and meteorological 
observations. Year by year, observations at recorded times, extending 
from the surface to the bottom, are made in well determined geographical 
positions throughout the patrolled region for determining the tempera- 
ture and salinity of the water by readings in series at definite depths, the 
direction and rate of movement of the waters in the different depths, the 
collection and preservation of plankton and samples of the water from 
ascertained depths, and in recording the state of the weather and the sea 
together with the barometric pressure, the humidity and the tempera- 
ture of the air. These observations are published annually in the Bulle- 
tins of the United States Coast Guard, Treasury Department. 
Closely related to these investigations from the standpoint of the ad- 
vancement of oceanography, is the accumulation of observations result- 
ing from the annual returns of the schooner Grampus in the Gulf of Maine 
and its vicinity, for the study of the correlation between physical ocean- 
ography and biological oceanography in these waters, under the joint 
auspices of the United States Bureau of Fisheries and the Museum of 
Comparative Zoology of Harvard University. 
At La JoUa, near San Diego, California, there has grown up an insti- 
tution by the name of the Scripps Institution for Biological Research, 
whose operations, recently brought under the auspices of the University 
