proceedings: biological society 25 



with reference to Holothuria and Physalia and to use these terms for 

 the animals to which they are currently applied in the usual text 

 books. Dr. Stiles also commented on recent cases in which trichina 

 had figured in certain lawsuits, and expressed the view that with the 

 purchase of meat products went the requirement that the product 

 should be properly cared for and that in the case of pork this care 

 required cooking before consumption; it was somewhat unfair to hold 

 the seller of trichinous meat entirely responsible. 



Dr. L. O. Howard cited an instance in which a cockroach was fig- 

 uring in a lawsuit. A man was suing a Texas railroad for damages 

 on the ground that typhoid fever had been contracted through his 

 drinking pop which had been contaminated by a cockroach, which had 

 apparently been in the bottle before the man drank the pop purchased 

 on the common carrier. 



The regular program consisted of an illustrated lecture by Dr. Paul 

 Bartsch: Mollusk collecting in the Philippines. Dr. Bartsch reviewed 

 the work of previous collectors and gave an account of his own collect- 

 ing expedition, describing the methods and apparatus used. He spoke 

 of mollusks as a source of food for the natives, and of their method of 

 gathering them, and called attention to the variations cf these ani- 

 mals as found on different islands. He showed also the necessity of 

 exact locality determinations on specimens, and discussed the geo- 

 graphic distribution of the Philippine molluscan fauna, pointing out 

 its possible origin from other islands or land masses. The lecture 

 covered not only the land mollusks but the marine forms as well. 



The 559th meeting of the Society was held in the Assembly Hall 

 of the Cosmos Club, Saturday, November 4, 1916; called to order at 

 8 p. m. by President Hay with sixty persons present. 



On recommendation of the Council the following persons were 

 elected to active membership: William B. Bell, Biological Survey; 

 Fraxcis Harper, Biological Survey; H. E. Anthony, American Mu- 

 seum of Natural History; and A. B. Howell, Covina, California. 



The President announced the death of Dr. E. A. Mearns, a mem- 

 ber of the Council of the Society and distinguished for his work on 

 birds, mammals, and other branches of natural history. 



Under the heading Brief Notes and Exhibition of Specimens, Dr. 

 R. W. Shufeldt exhibited a specimen of the Japanese giant sala- 

 mander and made some remarks on its habits and habitat. 



The regular program consisted of four papers as follows: 



R. H. Hutchison: A review of recent work on the house-fly. This 

 paper was restricted to a discussion of recent studies on the preovi- 

 position period, the range of flight, and the question of the overwinter- 

 ing of the house-fly. The remarks on the preoviposition period sum- 

 marized a recent bulletin of the Department of Agriculture on this 

 subject (Bulletin 345). In discussing the range of flight, attention 

 was directed to the fact that up to 1914 the longest recorded flight was 

 1700 yards. During the season of 1915 experiments were carried out 



