ALDRICH. The benzoic acid ester of chloretone is prepared by heating molecular quantities of anhydrous chloretone and benzoyl chloride (slight excess) on the steam bath, until hydrochloric acid gas ceases to be given off. Any uncombined chloretone or benzoylchloride is eliminated and the resulting body recrystallized from alcohol. The ester is when pure a solid melting at 34°-35° and not a liquid as claimed by Willgerodt and Durr (J. f. praktische Chemie (Neue Folge), 39 and 40, p. 189). It may be distilled under reduced pressure without decomposition. Chlorine determinations (Carius) gave results which characterize the compound as the benzoic ester:

C,H,CO-OCC3H ̧Cl ̧.

The compound is readily soluble in the organic solvents, and practically insoluble in water. It is not readily saponified, being much more stable than the other esters studied. Boiling with con. nitric acid does not decompose it as is the case with the aliphate esters of both chloretone and brometone. It is not volatile in the air, but is slightly volatile with steam. Pharmacological tests would indicate that it possesses less hypnotic and anesthetic properties and is less toxic than the esters studied thus far. Its relative stability is greater than that of any of the esters studied previously.

The utilization of waste silk fibroin: TREAT B. JOHNSON and P. G. DASCHAVSKY. A statistical study of the development of the waste silk industry in the United States. The behavior of fibroin on distillation is described, and an improved method of obtaining tyrosine from fibroin has been developed. It is shown experimentally that fibroin is a valuable source of the drug "tyramine," HỌ . CH. CHỊCH,NH,.

The conversion of anilides of chloracetic acid into ketide-isothiocyanates: TREAT B. JOHNSON, ARTHUR J. HILL and ERWIN B. KELSEY. Isothiocyanates of the general formula

SCN CH, CONHR

have hitherto never been synthesized. A method of preparation has now been developed which eliminates any possibility of the formation of isomeric rhodanides NCS. CH2CONHR. The work is an extension of earlier researches on thiocyanates and isothiocyanates carried on in the Sheffield Chemical Laboratory, and has led to the development of a new method of entering the hydantoin series.

The condensation of formaldehyde with o-nitrophenol: TREAT B. JOHNSON and J. B. HISHMAN.

RNH2+2R'CH2OH → R. N(R′), · + 2H,O. The work so far has been confined to the study of aniline and the isomeric toluidines and the two alcohols ethyl and n-butyl. It has been found by experiment that these alkylation reactions are greatly stimulated by using certain inorganic salts as catalytic agents. The first contribution on this subject has already been accepted for publication in the Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry.

The search for pressor substances in the pyrimi dine series: TREAT B. JOHNSON and L. A. MIKESKA. A study of some new amidine condensations leading to the formation of new types of cyclic amine combinations in the pyrimidine series. The substances under examination will be submitted to a careful pharmacological investigation to determine their pressor or other specific action. The research will be extended to the hydantoin and purine series.

The oxidation of iso-propyl alcohol by means of alkaline potassium permanganate: WM. L. EVANS and LILY BELL SEFTON.

CHARLES L. PARSONS, (To be continued) Secretary

OCEANOGRAPHY AND THE SEA

FISHERIES1

From

Ar the last Cardiff meeting of the British Association in 1891 you had as your president the eminent astronomer Sir William Huggins, who discoursed upon the then recent discoveries of the spectroscope in relation to the chemical nature, density, temperature, pressure and even the motions of the stars. the sky to the sea is a long drop; but the sciences of both have this in common that they deal with fundamental principles and with vast numbers. Over three hundred years ago Spenser in the "Faerie Queene" compared "the seas abundant progeny " with "the starres on hy," and recent investigations show that a liter of sea-water may contain more than a hundred times as many living organisms as there are stars visible to the eye on a clear night.

During the past quarter of a century great advances have been made in the science of the sea, and the aspects and prospects of seafisheries research have undergone changes which encourage the hope that a combination of the work now carried on by hydrographers and biologists in most civilized countries on fundamental problems of the ocean may result in a more rational exploitation and administration of the fishing industries.

And yet even at your former Cardiff meeting thirty years ago there were at least three papers of oceanographic interest-one by Professor Osborne Reynolds on the action of waves and currents, another by Dr. H. R. Mill on seasonal variation in the temperature of lochs and estuaries, and the third by our honorary local secretary for the present meeting, Dr. Evans Hoyle, on a deep-sea-tow-net

1 From the address of the president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science given at Cardiff on August 24, 1920.

oxybe of being opened and closed under water by the estrie current.

It was a notable meting in several raporte, of which I anal merely mention two. In Bection A, Bir Oliver Lodge gave the historie address in which he expounded the urgent neel, in the interests of both science and the industries, of a national institution for the promotion of physical research on a large weale. Lodge's pregnant idea put forward at this Cardiff meeting, supported and still further elaborated by Sir Douglas Galton as President of the Association at Ipswich, has since borne notable fruit in the establishment and rapid development of the National Phys ical Laboratory. The other outstanding event of that meeting is that you then appointed a committee of eminent geologists and naturalists to consider a project for boring through a coral reef, and that led during following years to the successive expeditions to the atoll of Funafuti in the Central Pacific, the results of

It is, to me, a matter of regret that Sir John Murray was never president of the British Association. I am revealing no secret when I tell you that he might have been. On more than one occasion he was invited by the council to accept nomination and he declined for reasons that were good and commanded our respect. He felt that the necessary duties of this post would interfere with what he regarded as his primary life-work-oceanographical explorations already planned, and the last of which he actually carried out in the North Atlantic in 1912, when over seventy years of age, in the Norwegian steamer Michael Sars along with his friend Dr. Johan Hjort.

Any one considering the subject-matter of this new science must be struck by its wide range, overlapping as it does the borderlands of several other sciences and making use of their methods and facts in the solution of its

Society, were of great interest alike to geologists, biologists, and oceanographers.

Dr. Huggins, on taking the chair in 1891, remarked that it was over thirty years since the association had honored astronomy in the selection of its president. It might be said that the case of oceanography is harder, as the association has never had an oceanographer as president-and the association. might well reply Because until very recent years there has been no oceanographer to have." If astronomy is the oldest of the sciences, oceanography is probably the youngest. Depending as it does upon the methods and results of other sciences, it was not until our knowledge of physics, chemistry, and biology were relatively far advanced that it became possible to apply that knowledge to the investigation and explanation of the phenomena of the ocean. No one man has done more to apply such knowledge derived from various other subjects and to organize the results as a definite branch of science than the late Sir John Murray, who may therefore be regarded as the founder of modern oceanography.

66

scope but extends beyond our globe and includes astronomical data in their relation to tidal and certain other oceanographical phenomena. No man in his work, or even thought, can attempt to cover the whole groundalthough Sir John Murray, in his remarkably comprehensive Summary" volumes of the Challenger Expedition and other writings, went far towards doing so. He, in his combination of physicist, chemist, geologist and biologist, was the nearest approach we have had to an all-round oceanographer. The International Research Council probably acted wisely at the recent Brussels conference in recommending the institution of two international sections in our subject, the one of physical and the other of biological oceanography-although the two overlap and are s0 interdependent that no investigator on the one side can afford to neglect the other.

On the present occasion I must restrict myself almost wholly to the latter division of the subject, and be content, after brief reference to the founders and pioneers of our science, to outline a few of those investigations and problems which have appeared to me to