VOL. 7, NO. 7 PROOF OF STEREOCHEMICAL CONFIGURATIONS . 1601

Since Haworth lias not yet reported on the oxidation products of d- talose, its configuration is obtained by the same procedure as that used for mannose. For the other rare aldohexoses, Fischer's method must be used, since these sugars have not yet been studied by the methylation and oxidation method.

The aldehydic formulas on page 1600 illustrate more clearly than is pos- sible in words the chain of reasoning.

British Science Association to Celebrate lWth Birthday. Gen. Jan Smuts, soldier, statesman, and philosopher, once a formidable enemy of England and now a pillar of the Empire, has been chosen for the unique honor of presiding over the largest of British scientific organizations, the British Association for the Advancement of Science, when i t celebrates the hundredth anniversary of its organization in London in 1931.

Gen. Smuts is the first president of the Association t o be chosen from any of the British dominions overseas. He is not, however, the first president who was not a professional scientist, for several prominent British public men have presided in past yean, and in 1926 the Prince of Wales delivered the presidential address a t Oxford.

Although Gen. Smuts is not a research scientist, he has high standing in scientific circles betause of his work in the field of scientific philosophy. He is the author of a book on what he has termed "holism," a concept of the way organisms work in their in- dividual lives and in the chain of development we know as evolution, which is recogni~ed as a genuine and thoughtful contribution. His lie of thought is akin to the ideas put forth by other scientists under the captions of "emergent evolution," "organismalism," ctc. It stresses the necessity of considering the inferaction of all the life factors, rather than the concentration of attention on one or a few as the key to the riddle of vital existence. C

The British Assodation for the Advancement of Science was organized a t York. England, in 1831. York was chosen as the most central city of the British Isle. Since the outlook of the Association is now as wide as the Empire, i t has been dedded that the appropriate meeting place for the centenary celebration should be London, the heart of the Empire, although previously no British Association meeting has ever been held there.-Science Sem'cc

Nitrogen of Air Fixed by Lowly Scum-Weed. Bacteria, which have hitherto had a nearly complete mouo~olv on the important business of capturing nitroxen from the

~ ~

air and making it available for the feeding of higher plants, may hare tu yield a part or their thmne to larger hut almost equally hnmblc plnnts, the hlue-green algae lixpcr- ments reported to the technical journal, Science, by Dr. F. E. Allison and H. J. Morris of the U. S. Department of Agriculture indicate that a t least one species of blue-green algae, kin to the multitudinous plants that give color to stagnant water, is able to fix nitrogen in considerable quantity when supplied with normal sunlight, or in the ab- sence of sunlight if it is given sugar.

Earlier experiments had indicated something of the kind, but the two Government scientists wanted to check up under more rigid control conditions, so they repeated the work with more elaborate precautions. One of the greatest difficulties w s to get a culture of the algae without any bacteria in it, for bacteria have a habit of sticking very tightly to the slimy sheaths of the larger plants. They finally cleared their algae of the last bacterium by irradiating it with ultra-violet light, which kills bacteria but does not harm the algae in the doses used.-Science Senrice