FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



135 



the strength of the association and to the 

 interest of its meetings. 



New Elected Officers of the American 

 Association. The following are the officers 

 elect for the next meeting (Detroit, 1897) of 

 the American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science: Pi-esident: Wolcott Gibbs, 

 of Newport, R. I. Vice-Presidents : (A) Math- 

 ematics and Astronomy, W. W. Beman, of 

 Ann Arbor, Mich. ; (B) Physics, Carl Barns, 

 of Providence, R. I. ; (C) Chemistry,, W. P. 

 Mason, of Troy, N. Y. ; (D) Mechanical Sci- 

 ence and Engineering, John Galbraith, of 

 Toronto, Canada; (E) Geology and Geogra- 

 phy, I. C. White, of Morgantown, W. Va. ; 

 (F) Zoology, G. Brown Goode,* of Washing- 

 ton, D. C. ; (G) Botany, George F. Atkinson, 

 of Ithaca, N. Y. ; (H) Anthropology, W J 

 McGee, of Washington, D. C. ; (I) Social 

 and Economic Science, Richard T. Colburn, 

 of Elizabeth, N. J. Permanent Secretary: 

 F, W. Putnam, of Cambridge, Mass. (office, 

 Salem, Mass.). General Secretary: Asaph 

 Ball, Jr., of Ann Arbor, Mich. Secretary of 

 the Council : D. S. Kellicott, of Columbus, 

 Ohio. Secretaries of the Sections : (A) Math- 

 ematics and Astronomy, James McMahon, of 

 Ithaca, N. Y. ; (B) Physics, Frederick Bedell, 

 of Ithaca, N. Y. ; (C) Chemistry, P. C. Freer, 

 of Ann Arbor, Mich. ; (D) Mechanical Science 

 and Engineering, John J. Flather, of Lafay- 

 ette, Ind. ; (E) Geology and Geography, C. 

 H. Smyth, Jr., of Clinton, N. Y. ; (F) Zoolo- 

 gy, C. C. Nutting, of Iowa City, lov.a ; (G) 

 Botany, F. C. Nev/combe, of Ann Arbor, 

 Mich. ; (H) Anthropology, Harlan I. Smith, 

 of New York, N. Y.; (I) Social and Eco- 

 nomic Science, Archibald Blue, of Toronto, 

 Canada. Treasurer: R. S. Woodward, of 

 New York, N. Y. 



The President's Address at the British 

 Association. The opening session of the 

 Liverpool meeting of the British Associa- 

 tion, September 16th, was witnessed by 

 about three thousand persons. Sir Douglas 

 Galton, the retiring president, in introducing 

 the new president. Sir Joseph Lister, spoke 

 of the occasion as marking the termination 

 of his own services to the association which, 

 as general secretary and finally as presi- 



* Died since Lis appointment. 



dent, had extended over a quarter of a cen- 

 tury. The presidency of Sir Joseph Lister, 

 who is also President of the Royal Society, 

 offers the first case in which a surgeon has 

 held this position in the body solely in vir- 

 tue of his professional attainments. It may 

 well be so, for those attainments, as Sir 

 Douglas Galton observed, " have been main- 

 ly devoted to mitigate suffering, and have 

 revolutionized the surgeon's art " ; and an 

 English journal is moved to declare him " one 

 of the greatest, if not th greatest, benefac- 

 tor mankind has ever had." The new presi- 

 dent's address was devoted to the illustra- 

 tion of the Interdependence of Science and 

 the Healing Art, and began with an estima- 

 tion of the value of the aid the Rontgen 

 rays may render to the surgeon and physi- 

 ologist. The fact that this is the jubilee of 

 anaesthesia in surgery brought that subject 

 properly forward. Next, the speaker re- 

 ferred to the researches of Pasteur on fer- 

 mentation and his disproval of spontaneous 

 generation as leading up to his own applica- 

 tion of aseptic surgery, the development and 

 ultimate method of which he described brief- 

 ly and with remarkable clearness. The work 

 of Robert Koch, Pasteur's attenuated virus 

 and artificial immunity, the centenary of 

 vaccination and Pasteur's application of the 

 principle in rabies, Behring and Kitasato's 

 antitoxic serum and its use in diphtheria, 

 and Metchnikoff's investigations of the 

 phagocytes, or white corpuscles, and their 

 power to counteract infection were presented 

 as specimens, culled from a wide field, of 

 what the art of healing has borrowed from 

 science and contributed to it. 



The Sectional Addresses in the British 

 Association. In the sectional meetings of 

 the British Association, Prof. J. J. Thom- 

 son, in Section A, made The Teaching of 

 Physics the subject of his presidential ad- 

 dress ; Dr. Ludwig Mond, in the Section 

 of Chemistry, reviewed the History of the 

 Manufacture of Chlorine, with especial ref- 

 erence to the influence which the progress 

 of pure science has had upon its develop- 

 ment and simplification ; Mr. J. E. Marr, of 

 Cambridge, in Section C, spoke of Strati- 

 graphical Geology and the effect which the 

 work done upon the subject has had upon 

 our knowledge of geology considered as a 



