756 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



average number of members were present, 

 but in all other respects the meeting was 

 considered to be quite up to the standard 

 of former years. Increased vigilance by the 

 sectional committee, in the examination of 

 papers offered, resulted in a marked im- 

 provemeut in the interest of the proceed- 

 ings. Probably at no time in the history 

 of the Association were so many papers re- 

 jected as at this meeting ; not because they 

 were inferior in merit to many presented at 

 former meetings, but because it was felt 

 that from year to year the time of the As- 

 sociation had been too much occupied in 

 hearing papers read which fell short of a 

 reasonable standard of excellence. It will 

 be another move in the right direction, if 

 the Association will peremptorily check 

 useless discussion, which wastes more valu- 

 able time than even the reading of inferior 

 papers. When the presidents of the sec- 

 tions shall have the courage to do this, then 

 will the Association do its allotted work 

 more effectually, and its primary object, the 

 " advancement of science," will be more 

 surely attained. It is worthy of note that 

 the chief papers read in the biological sec- 

 tion were in favor of the principle of evolu- 

 tion. " Facts for Darwin " were contributed 

 by Profs. Wm. S. Barnard, E. D. Cope, E. 

 S. Morse, Burt G. Wilder, Messrs. A. R. 

 Grote and Henry Gilman, and Hon. L. H. 

 Morgan. Abstracts of these and other 

 valuable papers follow. The suggestion of 

 efi-President Le Conte, that the national 

 Government appoint a scientific commission 

 for the investigation and repression of our 

 more destructive insect pests, is timely and 

 important, and we hope that, in the interest 

 of both agriculture and pure science, the 

 newspapers of the country will unite in 

 urging the matter upon the attention of the 

 authorities. The value of such commis- 

 sions, when properly constituted, has been 

 abundantly demonstrated in other countries, 

 and, as Prof Riley pointed out in some re- 

 marks following those of Prof. Le Conte, 

 there is no country in the world more in 

 need of the services of such a commission 

 than the United States at the present 

 time. 



The officers of the Association elected 

 for the ensuing year are : President, Wm. 

 B. Rogers, Boston ; General Secretary, Thos. 



Mendenhall, Columbus, 0. ; Vice-President 

 Section A, Chas. A. Young, Hanover, N. H. ; 

 Vice-President Section B, Edward S. Morse, 

 Salem, Mass. ; Secretary Section A, Arthur 

 W. Wright, New Haven ; Secretary Section 

 B, Albert H. Tuttle, Columbus, 0. ; Perma- 

 nent Secretary, F. W. Putnam, Salem, Mass. ; 

 Treasurer, Thomas T. Boune, Boston. 



The twenty-fifth meeting of the Associa- 

 tion is appointed in the city of Buffalo, to 

 commence August 23, 1876. 



Evidence of Evolntion. The scientific 

 world has for some time been in possession 

 of the fossil wealth of Wyoming and Dako- 

 ta, but the remains of those early mamma- 

 lian races had not been placed in relations 

 with the genesis of the human species till 

 Prof Cope's investigations were published 

 to the Association. The paper which de- 

 tails these researches and their results was 

 no doubt the most important document pre- 

 sented to the Association, and hence we give 

 a rather lengthy abstract of it. According 

 to Prof Cope, to prove the doctrine of evo- 

 lution, two propositions must be established : 

 1. That there exists an orderly succession 

 of structure, corresponding with succession 

 in time ; and, 2. That the terms of this suc- 

 cession of structure (species, etc.) actually 

 display transition, or connection by inter- 

 mediate forms. The first is to be demon- 

 strated from paleontology; the proof of the 

 second is restricted to the observation of 

 living varieties and the discovery of con- 

 necting forms. 



The structure of the feet is taken to be 

 the best criterion of descent or relation- 

 ship. The author distinguishes several 

 types of structure of the foot in recent 

 land-mammals, as the plantigrade^ the car- 

 nivorous, the horse, and the oz type. The 

 simplest form of feet is seen in the lowest 

 vertebrata, as lizards, salamanders, which 

 have five toes, with numerous separate 

 bones of the palm and sole which they ap- 

 ply to the ground in walking. The planti- 

 grade type approaches this. In the hind- 

 foot a succession of forms leads from this 

 generalized, many-toed, plantigrade type, to 

 the extreme specializations of the horse 

 and the ox. In any figure of the bones of' 

 the human foot, the reader will see two 

 rows called tarsal bones, the second row 



