Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 70.djvu/385

Rh including photography of the sun and of the spectra of sun-spots. Mr. John D. Hooker, of Los Angeles, has made a gift of $45,000 for a mirror of one-hundred-inch aperture for a great reflecting telescope. The largest new project planned was also for astronomy and consists of an appropriation of $200,000 extending over a decade for a catalogue giving the precise positions of the brighter stars. This involves the establishment of a meridian observatory in the southern hemisphere. The execution of the work has been entrusted to Professor Lewis Boss, director of the Dudley Observatory at Albany.

Next to astronomy, geophysics is most liberally supported by the institution. A special laboratory for geophysical research is being erected in Washington at a cost of $150,000. Dr. A. L. Day, who will have charge of the department, succeeded last year in producing quartz glass, which is of value owing to its high melting point and low rate of expansion under temperature changes. Work in terrestrial magnetism under Dr. L. A. Bauer, who has resigned his position in the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, is supported by an appropriation of $54,000. The yacht Galilee made last year two voyages in the Pacific, traversing some 26,000 miles.

A new department, established last year, was that of botanical research, under the direction of Dr. D. T. MacDougal, whose headquarters are the Desert Laboratory at Tucson, Ariz. The flora of the arid regions has been studied, including the vegetation of the Salton Basin, while Dr. MacDougal has continued his experiments at the New York Botanical Garden on discontinuous variation in plants. One of the larger projects is also the work in horticulture of Mr. Luther Burbank.

Two departments are devoted to biology. Work in experimental evolution is conducted under the direction of Professor Charles B. Davenport at Cold Spring Harbor, where land has been secured and a laboratory erected. The other is the department of marine biology conducted under Dr. A. G. Mayer at the Dry Tortugas, Florida. A temporary laboratory has been built there.

Work in nutrition has been carried on by Professor F. G. Benedict, Professor R. S. Chittenden and Professor F. B. Osborne. This is regarded as one