XXXV111 CARNKGIE INSTITUTION 



a biological standpoint. He has developed a new method for the 

 study of fossil cycads by perfecting or inventing inverted drills, by 

 means of which he has secured leaves, branches, fruits, flowers, and 

 terminal buds in the form of cylindrical cores cut from the cycad 

 trunks. He has also adopted the novel plan of cementing together 

 again, in their original position, the parts of such cores resulting 

 from the cutting of a series of thin sections, and in this way securing 

 a second series, also complete. By these methods he has cut a dozen 

 fruits, in various stages of growth, from a silicified cycad trunk. 

 He has also cut thin longitudinal and transverse sections of flowers 

 surrounded by leaf bases. It is now possible to make, in the case 

 of cycads, intensive studies of single trunks, such as have never 

 before been made in the case of any fossil plants. 



S. W. Williston, University of Chicago, Chicago, 111. Grant No. 

 49. For preparing a monograph on the P/esiosaurian group. $800. 



Abstract of Report. — Professor Williston reports that he investi- 

 gated the type material of Plesiosaurs at Colorado College, Uni- 

 versity of Kansas Museum, the American Museum of Natural 

 History in New York, the Museum of the Academy of Natural 

 Sciences, Philadelphia, and the National Museum, Washington. 

 Important material has been sent him from these and other sources, 

 upon which he is at present engaged. He hopes to complete his 

 study during the year 1904. 



Physics. 



Henry Crew, Evanston, 111. Grant No. 10. For study of certain 

 a re spectra . $1,000. 



Abstract of Report. — Professor Crew reports that after the build- 

 ing of certain apparatus, which required several months, he began 

 the experimental part of his work. He found unexpected diffi- 

 culties in working with magnesium and zinc, the two metals in 

 which he hoped to find the order of appearance of the lines of the 

 spark spectra. 



His second problem was to complete the maps of the spectra of 

 cadmium and aluminum. The map of the cadmium arc has been 

 completed ; that of aluminum nearly so. 



The difficulty of obtaining an oscillograph has delayed the be- 

 ginning of work on the third problem, the determination of the 

 E. M. F. curve with the " rotating metallic arc." 



