THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 



5 6 7 



THE PEOGEESS OF SCIENCE 



THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF 



SCIENCES AXD THE AMERICAN 



PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 



The scientific meetings held at 

 Washington and Philadelphia during 

 the third week of April offered pro- 

 grams of interest and were pleasant 

 events for those able to attend them. 

 Neither of these societies is exactly 

 in touch with democratic institutions 

 or is able to adjust itself to the dif- 

 ferentiation of science, but they have 

 shown in recent years more vitality 

 than might have been expected. The 

 National Academy has taken steps to 

 make its scientific programs of greater 

 general interest and has enlarged its 

 membership, so that instead of at most 

 five new members elected annually 

 there may now be ten. The American 

 Philosophical Society has within the 

 past few years resumed to a certain 

 extent the national character which it 

 possessed when Philadelphia was the 

 chief scientific center of the country. 

 Its annual general meetings bring to- 

 gether a considerable group of men of 

 science from different parts of the 

 country, and the meeting two years 

 ago to celebrate the bicentenary of the 

 birth of Franklin, its founder, was 

 probably the most elaborate and suc- 

 cessful scientific celebration ever held 

 in this country. 



At the meeting of the National 

 Academy in Washington there were 

 twenty papers on the program, twelve 

 by members and eight on introduction. 

 Several of the papers were elaborately 

 illustrated with the lantern, the most 

 noteworthy slides being the extraor- 

 dinary enlargements of photographs of 

 cells, showing the chromosomes on 

 which the determination of sex de- 

 pends, made by Professor E. B. Wil- 

 son, of Columbia University. Other 

 illustrated papers were presented by ' 



Professor W. M. Davis, of Harvard 

 University, showing standard land 

 forms for a proposed international 

 atlas; by Professor W. B. Scott, of 

 Princeton University, on the age of 

 certain beds in Patagonia, with resto- 

 rations of Santa Cruz mammals by 

 Mr. C. R. Knight, of the American 

 Museum of Natural History, and by 

 Professor E. L. Mark, of Harvard Uni- 

 versity, on the Bermuda Biological 

 Station at Agar's Island. Mr. Alex- 

 ander Agassiz gave an account of the 

 pelagic fauna of Victoria Nyanza and 

 of the elevated reefs of Mombasa and 

 the adjacent coast, and Professor T. 

 C. Chamberlin, of the University of 

 Chicago, described atmospheres sup- 

 plementary to the one ordinarily con- 

 sidered. Then there were more tech- 

 nical papers. That such papers can be 

 made attractive was shown by the ac- 

 count by Professor W. G. MacCallum, 

 of the Jonns Hopkins University, of 

 the parathyroid glands in their rela- 

 tion to tetany and calcium metabolism, 

 and by the paper of Professor F. R. 

 Moulton, of the University of Chicago, 

 on the application of periodic solutions 

 of the problem of three bodies to the 

 motion of the moon. Other events of 

 the meeting were a visit to the newly 

 constructed and admirably equipped 

 geophysical laboratory of the Carnegie 

 Institution, an illustration of which 

 was shown in a recent issue of the 

 Monthly, and a lecture on solar re- 

 search, given under the auspices of the 

 Smithsonian Institution by Professor 

 George E. Hale, of the Mt. Wilson 

 Solar Observatory. 



The new members elected were : 

 Edwin Brant Frost, director of the 

 Yerkes Observatory, University of Chi- 

 cago; William E. Storey, professor of 

 mathematics, Clark University; Ed- 

 ward F. Nichols, professor of physics, 



