72G
JOlJRNAL O F CHEMICAL EDIJCATION
Receipts: Enrolment fees-active members. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Requested of T h e Chemical Foundation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Aemr., 193 1
8100.00 5500.00
8. I t was voted to request the Committee on Naming and Scope of Committees to consider the advisability of appointing committees t o study the following problems: ( a ) Correspondence courses. ( b ) Minimum standards of teaching force and equipment for various degrees in chemistry. (6) Vocational guidance. (d) Juvenile training in chemistry. (e) Museums. (f) Optimum size of recitation and laboratory sections. Adjourned a t 12.30 P . M ., having been in session as follows: Friday, January 2nd, 10.00 A . M . t o 12.45 e x , and 1.30 to 5.30 P . M .; Saturday, January 3rd, 9.00 A.M. to 12.30 P. M . R. A. B A KER , Secretary Dose of Copper Needed to Make Oysters Settle Down. Young oysters will not forsake a roving life and settle down to business until they have had a taste of copper. This has been discovered through researches of H. F. Prythearch of the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries, who has been investigating the life history of ovsters as a part of the government's drive t o make oysters more abundant again. When an oyster first hatches from the egg, it lives for a couple of weeks as a freeswimming larva. propelled through the water by the lashings of a multitude of hair-like processes called cilia. This free-swimming period in their lives secures the wide distribution of the oyster young. At about two weeks of age it is ripe to settle down. But it docs not do so unless it receives its dose of copper. Lacking that. i t continues to swim aimlessly about, becomes prematurely old and dies a prey to swarming microorganisms. If i t gets its few molecules of copper, its cilia cease to wave, and it settles to the bottom. There it protrudes its one foot, and proceeds to crawl laboriousl?i about for a while. Finally it extrudes a little glue-like stuff, plants one of its two shells squarely in that, and thereafter is a fixed and solid citizen of the oyster commonwealth. I t takes very little copper to make an oyster larva quit swimming and adopt the sessile life of the adult form. One part of copper in fifty millions of water will turn the trick. Mr. Prythearch demonstrates the importance of copper in oyster "setting" to oystermen by first showing them the free-swimming larvae under the microscope, and in the water for a few seconds. Enough copper salt dissolves off then divping . . . a .Denny . the coin in that brief period to have the needed effect on the young oysters. The relation of copper ~. to oyster "setting" was discovered by accident, through the introduction of minute traces of copper intolaboratory water supplies from a brasslined pump. I n nature, the copper is brought down to the brackish water of the oyster beds by freshwater streams.-S&ncc Service ~
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