the better the margin of safety in our intake of vitamins A, B, and C, and the better our chances of resisting infections and enjoying the highest attainable degree of positive health. As an impersonal summary of the values of numerous staple foods as sources of vitamins A, B, C, and D, we have reproduced, in tabular f o r m , the chart recently published by the American Medical Association.
Red Blood Cells Found in Mummies 1200 Years Old. Finding of red blood cells in two Peruvian mummies 1200 years old has heen reported by Dr. Herbert U. Williams, of the University of Buffalo. Previous efforts t o find traces of red blood in Egyptian and other mummies have not been successful, though a great number of mummies have been examined and other remarkable evidences of preservation have been described. Several anatomists have reported, in the past, signs of what might be red blood cells in dinosaurs millions of years old, but such evidence has been ~ n s i d e r e dinconclusive and doubtful. Dr. Williams states that the discovery of red blood cells in the mummies was unexpected. But microscope studies and chemical tests led him t o the conclusion that unusually favorable circumstances must have made it possible for a few of these fragile structures t o survive in the tissues even through so many centuries. I n one of the mummies he found what he interpreted t o be "an old hemorrhage, with survival of a few of the red corpuscles, but with disintegration of the majority." Dissection of the mummies also revealed arteries, nerves, muscles, and tendons, which could be readily identified. Dr. Williams' findings, he states, indicate that much could be done by study of such mummies t o determine the diseases of early American races, especially diseases of the chest and abdomen.-Science Service Bullets of Atomic MeDemolish Molecules. A new method of chemical decomposition hy which "excited" mercury atoms collide with the chemical molecules and split them apart into their constituents just as a bullet from a rifle shatters a clay pigeon, was recently described by Prof. Hugh Stott Taylor, chairman of the chemistry department of Princeton University. This method, which bas been developed in the Princeton laboratories by John R. Bates, Charlotte Elizabeth Procter Fellow in Chemistry, shows that the effect of high temperatures on chemical compounds can be imitated a t ordinary room temperatures by introducing into the system mercury atoms endowed by light with high energy. In this way, water molecules are broken into fragments of hydrogen and oxygen, ammonia into nitrogen and hydrogen, reactions which are generally achieved a t high temperatures. The fragments of the decomposing molecule are very reactive and new camhinat i m s can, therefore, besecured. Thus, when benzol is shattered in the presence of oxygen, phenol or carbolic acid is obtained. According t o Prof. Taylor, such a reaction would be of great commercial importance if cheaper methods of producing "excited" atoms could be found. Experiments in this dimtion are in progress a t Princeton as well as the investigation of "excited" atoms of zinc and cadmium.-Science Service
