of the equipment, while Fig. 2 shows a closer view of the truck loaded with seven 10,000-pound and four 2,500pound weights, and the method of handling the weights.
In testing a scale the procedure is as follows: First, the box car which opens at one end is placed by a shifting engine five or ten feet from one end of the scale. Then the weights are unbolted, the gas engine is started and the crane is run out the open end about seven feet. Then the truck is picked up and set on the scale by the crane. This is followed by placing on the truck the necessary number of 10,000pound weights to make up the desired first-test load. The truck is then moved over the bearing points of each section of the scale and the reading of the scale noted. The truck is run back to the original position and additional weights are added to make up the next test load, and the separate sections of the scale are again tested. This can be repeated until all the standard weights have been placed on the truck. If it is desired to go still higher the truck with its load of standard weights can then be run off the scale, the box car placed on the scale and weighed, the correction to the scale having been ascertained by the previous test. Knowing the weight of the empty car, the standard weights and truck can then be loaded, and the box car again placed upon the scale and weighed. In this way the scale may be tested up to approximately 175,000 pounds.
The general plan of the equipment is due to L. A. Fischer, physicist, Bureau of Standards, and to C. A. Briggs, assistant physicist, the whole being constructed by A. H. Emery, Stamford, Conn.
SCIENTIFIC NOTES
We record with regret the death of Dr. Boswell Park, the distinguished surgeon of Buffalo; of Dr. George William Peckham, librarian of the Milwaukee Public Library, known for his contributions to entomology; of Dr. Edmund B. Huey, a student of genetic psychology, recently of the Johns Hopkins University, and of Mr. W. D. Marks, formerly professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, later & consulting engineer in New York City.
Colonel William C. Gorgas has been appointed to be surgeon-general of the army of the United States, with the rank of brigadier-general.
The fourth annual award of the Willard Gibbs Medal, founded by Mr. William A. Converse, will be made by the Chicago Section of the American Chemical Society to Dr. Ira Remsen, of Johns Hopkins University. The previous recipients of this medal are Professor Svante Arrhenins, Professor Theodore W. Richards and Dr. Leo H. Baekeland.
Arrangements have been made for the establishment, as a memorial to Lord Lister in Edinburgh, of a Lister Institute.
The General Education Board has given $750,000 towards an endowment of $1,500,000 for the medical department of Washington University, St. Louis, to create full time teaching and research departments in medicine, surgery and pediatrics.
