HCl and H2SO, but also of HNO,, HBr and CHO, upon the seedlings of Zea Mais, and arrived at practically the same conclusion. I not only called attention to the fact that the seedlings of Indian corn are much more resistant to H ions than those of Lupinus albus used by Kahlenberg and True* but also that they are able to withstand a solution of HCl or H.SO, four times as concentrated as are the seedlings of Pisum sativum.

It is true that the exact concentration of H.SO, and HCL which I found to inhibit the growth of corn roots differs somewhat from the figures given by Dr. Loew. This variation in the results may easily be explained by the different methods of experimentation. F. D. HEALD.

UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA.

SHORTER ARTICLES.

A LITTLE KNOWN DEVIL-FISH.

IN the Annals and Magazine of Natural History for August, 1897 (XX., 227), Boulenger published a 'Description of a New Ceratopterine Eagle-Ray from Jamaica,' which he named Ceratobatis Robertsii. I was reminded thereby of a species described many years before (1862) by Richard Hill in an article on 'The Devil-fish of Jamaica' in 'The Intellectual Observer' (II., 167–176). Therein he named a small species Cephaloptera Massenoidea on account of a supposed resemblance to the C. Massena of Risso. find that Hill's name and article are unknown to ichthyologists generally and, therefore, a note on the subject may be of use at the present time and call attention to some unappreciated facts.

I

tail was 30 inches long. It was a female, having 'a fœtus just mature for extrusion, 16 inches broad,' and consequently full grown or at least sexually mature.

Hill's description is not sufficiently full to enable an identification to be made from it alone with Boulenger's specimen. No mention is made of the dentition which is said by Boulenger to be restricted to the upper jaw' in his species. Furthermore, there is

an apparent discrepancy in the relative proportions, but this may be due to the difference of the points between the measurements. The proportion of the sum of the length of the disk and tail to the width, in Hill's specimen, is not irreconcilable with the proportions of Boulenger's fish. It is improbable, too, that two small species of the same family should Whether be inhabitants of the same waters. there are or are not is a problem for native Jamaican naturalists or visitors to the island to determine.

Boulenger's measurements are given in millimeters; Hill's in feet and inches. Reducing Hill's to millimeters the principal measurements are as follows:

The difference in size between the species in question and the gigantic devil-fish is remarkable. Another individual (which must have been of another species) was noted by Hill as caught shortly after the one he described which had a disk 15 feet wide and 91 feet long and a tail only 2 feet long.

The pregnant mother of the species described by Hill was considerably less in size than the fœtus procured from the body of another female killed in Jamaica many years previously; that foetus was 'five feet broad.'

Such differences in size even might possibly be within specific variation, but as the differences are coordinate with other structural characters, they can not be in this case.

THEO. GILL.

SHALL WE DISMEMBER THE COAST

SURVEY?*

THE proposition to turn the hydrographic work of the Coast Survey over to the Navy Department has been so long urged and so often rejected that its revival at the present moment seems singularly inopportune. Twice at least within the last twenty years it has been exhaustively considered and adversely reported on by committees of Congress when all the circumstances were much more in its favor than they are at present. Prominent treasury officials under the first administration of President Cleveland were known to be so hostile to the management of the survey that an investigation not only unfriendly, but very far from judicial in its character, was undertaken with the approval of the President. The report set forth that abuses had crept into the management, some of them of long standing. The resignation of the superintendent was forced, and it only remained for Congress to take the necessary action to transfer the survey. At the following session a committee of Congress, having Senator Allison at its head, made a thorough investigation of the whole subject. The result of this inquiry was to leave things as they were.

enter our ports.

Of course, a naval ship has as much need as a merchantman for these means of navigation. There is nothing required on a chart for naval use different from that required for the ordinary purposes of commerce. Accordingly, the Coast Survey was very naturally included among the bureaus to be transferred to the new department.

Extraordinary though the proposition to reverse this action may now appear, the reasons against it are so strong and so near the surface that they hardly need to be cited if the question is to be decided on its merits. Looking at the matter from a purely abstract point of view, the question is whether such a work as that of making charts of our coast can be most efficiently and economically undertaken by the navy or by a civilian organization like the present one. Let us carefully weigh all that is said in favor of the proposed transfer. Hydrographic surveying is part of the business of a naval officer. He learns as much about it while at the Naval Academy as the absorbing character of his other studies will permit. The question whether, during the limited periods which he can possibly devote to such work, he can acquire as much skill as a civilian wholly engaged upon it, is a question which the reader can decide for himself. But the mere fact that naval officers can do the work does not prove that it should be placed under the Navy Department rather than under that of commerce. The arguments on the question whether naval or civilian methods are the more economical have, on the whole, been favorable to the civilians. But even here one important item has been too little considered, and that is the cost of the naval officer himself. The mere salary of the latter is but a part of what it costs the In government to educate and train him. estimating his cost, we must include not only what is expended in his training and his offduty pay, but his retired pay also. To reach a correct conclusion on this point, we shall probably have to double the pay of every officer of the navy from the time when he gets his first commission up to the date of his retire

ment.

Of course, we must include in the estimate the millions being expended at the Naval Academy for the improvement of its facilities. To expend such sums in training officers to perform duty that civilians are now carrying on at far less cost would be a most unjustifiable expenditure of the public money.

The slight reason for the employment of naval officers on civil duty which formerly existed has entirely disappeared with the lapse of time. For several years after the civil war we had more officers than were necessary for the management of our ships and the administration of shore stations. Under these circumstances there was no objection to their employment on such outside service as might be appropriate. But all this has now been changed. The cry in every department of the naval service is for more officers. We hear daily stories of the department's inability to man its ships properly. Why should the service be deprived of its trained officers if this is the case?

The practice of foreign nations has been cited in favor of the proposed action. It is true that the hydrographic surveys of the leading countries of Europe are carried on to a large extent by their respective naval departments. But this statement needs to be supplemented by two others. Both the administration and the personnel of foreign surveys are to a greater or less extent distinct from those which relate to naval duty properly so called. In France the surveys are all conducted by a special corps of hydrographic engineers,' and not by line officers at all. In England, by custom, the hydrographer of the admiralty is permanently withdrawn from military duty. He can, of course, be restored to it if such a course is desirable, but practically this is seldom, if ever, done.

These features of foreign hydrographic surveys have always been successfully antagonized by our naval authorities, and we can not suppose that they have changed their minds on the subject. The transfer of the Coast Survey to the Navy Department, whatever may be the intentions of those who favor it, practically means the administration of the

survey and the performance of its most difficult work by officers of the navy, each temporarily withdrawn from naval service proper for this special duty, which he is expected to abandon for life about the time when he has obtained a respectable measure of skill in its performance. A civilian organization under the Secretary of the Navy, however plausible it may be made to appear, is an impossibility in the present state of naval opinion.

The law organizing the Department of Commerce gave the President authority to transfer to it bureaus from other departments of the government, that of the navy included. There is good reason to believe that this provision was expected to lead to the inclusion of the National Observatory, and perhaps of the Hydrographic Office also, within the new department. The transfer of the former is loudly called for by all the facts of its history and present position, and if any unification of the government hydrographic surveys is to be carried out, it should be done by transferring the Hydrographic Office also, for it has no necessary relation to the Navy Department whatsoever, and properly belongs to the Department of Commerce.

NUTRITION EXPERIMENTS.

In response to the many inquiries regarding the investigation on nutrition now being carried on at New Haven, Professor Chittenden, Director of the Sheffield Scientific School, has made the following statement:

Through the courtesy of Secretary Root and Surgeon General O'Reilly of the Army, the War Department will cooperate with the Sheffield Laboratory in a physiological study of the minimal amount of proteid or albuminous food required for the maintenance of health and strength under ordinary conditions of life. In carrying out this purpose, twenty men have been detailed from the Hospital Corps of the Army, and will be in New Haven on Monday, under the charge of Lieutenant Wallace DeWitt, Assistant Surgeon in the U. S. Army, and three non-commissioned officers. The Scientific School has fitted up a house on Vanderbilt Square, at the corner of Temple and

Wall streets, where the men will be housed and cared for during the period of the investigation, doubtless for about nine months.

In this study there are no special theories involved and no special systems of dietetics, but the object especially aimed at is to ascertain experimentally whether physiological economy in diet cannot be practiced with distinct betterment to the body and without loss of strength and vigor. There is apparently no question that people ordinarily consume much more food than there is any real necessity for, and that this excess of food is in the long run detrimental to health and defeats the very objects aimed at. It is with a view to gather as many facts as possible on this subject that the study in question is undertaken.

This investigation is merely a continuation, on a larger scale, of earlier observations made in the Sheffield Laboratory of the Sheffield Scientific School last year, and referred to in an article in the Popular Science Monthly by Professor Chittenden, and bears directly upon the question of a possible physiological economy in nutrition.

THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES.

ON the first of last July the United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries, until then an independent bureau not attached to any government department, became a part of the new Department of Commerce and Labor.

With the transfer the name was changed. The United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries' is now a thing of the past, so far as the name is concerned, and it will hereafter be known as the 'Bureau of Fisheries,'-a title certainly much shorter and more usable than the old. Many of us loved the title under which this branch of our government gained and still maintains an honored name among biologists, fish-culturists and anglers throughout the world, cumbersome and unwieldy as that title was; but we welcome the more simple

name and have no doubt but that the 'Bureau of Fisheries' will soon become equally honored and well known.

The principal positions in the Bureau of

Fisheries and the men who fill them are as follows:

Commissioner, Hon. Geo. M. Bowers. Deputy Commissioner, Dr. H. M. Smith. Assistant in Charge of Scientific Inquiry and Ichthyologist, Dr. Barton Warren Evermann. Assistant in Charge of Fish Culture, Mr. John W. Titcomb.

Assistant in Charge of Statistics and Methods of the Fisheries, Mr. A. B. Alexander. Chief Clerk, Mr. Irving H. Dunlap. Disbursing Officer, Mr. W. P. Titcomb. Engineer and Architect, Mr. Hector von Bayer.

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS.

SIR WILLIAM RAMSAY, the eminent British chemist, and M. Henri Poincaré, the eminent mathematical physicist, have been elected corresponding members of the Vienna Academy of Sciences.

PROFESSOR M. ALLEN STARR, M.D., LL.D., of the Medical Department of Columbia University, of New York, has been elected a corresponding member of the Neurological Society of the United Kingdom, London. Dr. Weir Mitchell is the only other American member.

THE International Geological Congress awarded its Spendiarow prize to Professor W. C. Brogger of Christiania.

PROFESSOR C. S. SHERRINGTON, of the University of Liverpool, gave the address at the opening of the new medical buildings of the University of Toronto, which have been fully described in SCIENCE. Professor Sherrington will visit some of the medical centers of the United States before returning to England.

PROFESSOR THEODORE WILLIAM RICHARDS, having recovered from his illness, has been made chairman of the Division of Chemistry in Harvard University, in place of Professor Charles Loring Jackson. Professor Jackson retains the Erving professorship and all his other work in research and instruction, resigning the chairmanship alone.

DR. W. W. CAMPBELL, director of the Lick Observatory, was expected to lecture this week at Wellesley College, on 'The Motions of the Solar System through Space.'

DR. LOUIS PARKES has been appointed consulting sanitary adviser to the British Department of Public Works and Buildings to succeed the late Professor Corfield.

MR. CHARLES LOUIS POLLARD, assistant curator in the Botanical Department of the United States National Herbarium, has been granted a furlough for the period of two and one half years. He will spend this time in Springfield, Mass., being occupied in literary work on the staff of the G. and C. Merriam Company.

DR. GERVASE GREEN, formerly instructor in psychology in Yale University, has returned from a year spent abroad, and will enter a law office in Omaha.

PROFESSOR GARMAN, professor of philosophy at Amherst, has been given leave of absence during the year. His courses will be given by Professor A. H. Pierce, of Smith College. Professor F. J. E. Woodbridge, of Columbia University, will give a course of lectures during the winter on 'Representative Philosophers.'

CHARLES E. CASPERI, Ph.D., has resigned his position as director of the Research Laboratory of the Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, of St. Louis, to accept the chair of chemistry in the St. Louis College of Pharmacy.

THE Associated Press has received a despatch stating that Dr. F. A. Cooke and his party failed to reach the summit of Mount McKinley, but have made various geographical observations in the vicinity.

THE Swiney lectures on geology in connection with the British Museum of Natural History, will be given by Dr. John S. Flett during November. The lectures, twelve in number, are on the volcanoes of the world.

WE learn from Nature that a movement is in progress for erecting a memorial of James Watt, and at a meeting recently held it was decided that the form the memorial should take should be an institution for scientific research, and an appeal is now being made for funds to carry out the project. Mr. Andrew Carnegie, who is the secretary for America, has promised a subscription of £10,000 towards the object.

MR. C. J. CORNISH has prepared a life of the late Sir William Flower, which will be published by the Macmillans.

PROFESSOR BENJAMIN G. BROWN, for thirtyfive years professor of mathematics at Tufts College, died on September 29 at the age of sixty-six years.

PROFESSOR HUDSON A. WOOD died at Vernon, N. Y., on October 28, aged sixty-two years. He had been a teacher of mathematics and was the author of several text-books.

DR. OSKAR SCHNEIDER of Dresden, the geographer, died on September 8, at the age of sixty-two years.

THE Canadian Minister of Marine and Fisheries, Mr. Profontaine, has stated in the House that he is in favor of the government appropriating $80,000 to build a boat for Captain Bernier's polar expedition.

THE National Statistical Institute met at Berlin beginning on September 21. Professor von Iname-Sternegg was elected president.

ACCORDING to Nature Professor Graham Kerr has received a letter from Mr. J. S. Budgett in which the latter announces that he has solved the important problem of the development of Polypterus. The letter is written from Southern Nigeria and dated August 28. "It appears that Mr. Budgett has been able to fertilize a large quantity of eggs of Polypterus senegalus, and that the early development is astoundingly frog-like '-segmentation being complete and fairly equal, and the process of invagination resembling that of the frog's egg. Prominent neural folds are formed which arch over in the normal fashion. Mr. Budgett had already made three expeditions to various parts of tropical Africa in his endeavor to obtain material for studying the development of Polypterus, and zoologists will rejoice that his efforts have been at last attended with success. The Crossopterygians have been for some time the most important vertebrate group awaiting the investigation of the embryologist, and the results gained by Mr. Budgett in the working out of his material in the laboratory will be looked forward to