THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. 



447 



ined and will shortly be published. The 

 neon tube is extremely brilliant and of 

 an orange-pink hue, and its spectrum is 

 characterized by a multitude of intense 

 orange and yellow lines. The krypton 

 tube is pale violet, while that of xenon 

 is sky-blue. The atomic weights of 

 krypton and xenon are, respectively, 82 

 and 128, and the inert elements thus 

 form a regular group lying between the 

 halogens and the alkalies. The atomic 

 weights are as follows: Helium, 4; 

 neon, 20; argon, 40; krypton, 82; xenon, 

 128. Their physical properties also cor- 

 respond with this grouping. 



The daily papers have during the 

 past month exploited with nearly equal 

 prominence Mr. Tesla's pretended com- 

 munications from the planets, the al- 

 leged discovery by Professor Loeb of an 

 elixir of life, and Professor Pupin's im- 

 portant discovery improving the tele- 

 phone and the telegraph. These three 

 cases pretty well represent the different 

 methods of newspaper science. Mr. 

 Tesla likes to be advertised, and the ar- 

 raignment of his vagaries by our cor- 

 respondent, published in another col- 

 umn, is none too severe. Professor 

 Loeb and Dr. Lingle have carried out 

 valuable researches on the action of 

 salts on muscular contraction, pub- 

 lished in the 'American Journal of 

 Physiology,' and these have been exag- 

 gerated and distorted in the daily press. 

 We are requested by Professor Loeb to 

 state that this has been done without 

 his knowledge, and continued in spite 

 of his earnest protest. Professor Pupin's 

 discovery is reported with substantial 

 accuracy as regards its nature, its im- 

 portance, and the large sum paid by the 

 American Bell Telephone Company for 

 the patent. Professor Pupin's discovery 

 was made in the course of a long theo- 

 retical and experimental investigation, 

 carried on solely to increase our knowl- 

 edge of electrical phenomena and with- 

 out any reference to the Patent Office. 

 The researches were communicated to the 

 American Institute of Electrical Engi- 

 neers last spring, and published in their 



'Proceedings.' The application consists 

 in the use of self-induction coils at regu- 

 lar intervals along a wire which coun- 

 teract its capacity and maintain the dis- 

 tinctness of the electric wave. It is thus 

 possible to telephone to San Francisco 

 as distinctly as can now be done to 

 Chicago, and in the use of lighter wires 

 to Chicago alone hundreds of thousands 

 of dollars are saved in the cost of cop- 

 per. Underground wires for telephony 

 can now be used, and ocean telephony 

 is made possible. 



The scientific societies, whose mid- 

 winter meetings are described above, 

 have elected the following presidents for 

 the ensuing year: American Society of 

 Naturalists, Prof. W. T. Sedgwick, of 

 the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 

 nology; American Morphological Soci- 

 ety, Prof. J. S. Kingsley, of Tufts Col- 

 lege; American Society of Bacteriolo- 

 gists, Prof. W. H. Welch, of the Johns 

 Hopkins University; Society of Plant 

 Morphology and Physiology, Dr. Erwin 

 F. Smith, U. S. Department of Agricul- 

 ture; Folk-lore Society, Dr. Frank 

 Russell, of Harvard University; Ameri- 

 can Psychological Association, Prof. 

 Josiah Royce, of Harvard University: 

 American Mathematical Society, Prof. 

 E. H. Moore, of the University of Chi- 

 cago; American Chemical Society, Prof. 

 W. F. Clarke, of the U. S. Geological 

 Survey; the Geological Society of Amer- 

 ica, the Hon. Charles D. Wolcott, Di- 

 rector of the U. S. Geological Survey. 

 — Porf. E. E. Barnard, of the Yerkes 

 Observatory, has been awarded the 

 Janssen prize of the Paris Academy 

 of Sciences for his discovery of the fifth 

 satellite of Jupiter. — Dr. G. A. Miller, 

 of Cornell University, has been awarded 

 the mathematical prize of the Academy 

 of Sciences, at Cracow. — Prof. H. C. 

 Bumpus, of Brown University, has been 

 appointed curator of invertebrate zool- 

 ogy and assistant to the president in the 

 American Museum of Natural History, 

 New York. — We record with regret the 

 death of Lord William Armstrong, in- 

 ventor of the gun that bears his name 



