LITERATURE MATHEMATICS. 299 



Tatlock, John S. P., Stanford University, California. Preparation of a Con- 

 cordance to Chaucer. (For previous report see Year Book No. 16.) 



During the last part of 1917, Professor Tatlock completed the work 

 of sorting and alphabetizing the 300,000 to 400,000 slips for the 

 Chaucer dictionary or concordance, which were made in England 

 some forty years ago, and had been the basis for the work of the late 

 Professor Fliigel. In this task Mr. A. A. Bennett and Dr. Arthur 

 G. Kennedy were capable and generous collaborators; and valuable 

 assistance was received from Professors W. H. Carruth, Raymond M. 

 Alden, and L. E. Bassett. After results had been verified in every pos- 

 sible way, it appeared that about 0.4 per cent of the slips were 

 lacking, with no practicable method of discovering which they are. 

 Previously it had not been possible to test the material for complete- 

 ness. It now appears to be necessary to have new slips made by a 

 more reUable method. Since there is a prospect that a new text 

 of Chaucer's works may be available in a few months, it has been 

 decided to suspend the work until early in 1919. Meanwhile certain 

 statistics and other information have been gained from the old slips 

 which wdll facilitate working with the new. 



MATHEMATICS. 



Morley, Frank, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland. Applica- 

 tion of Cremona Groups to the solution of algebraic equations. (For previous 

 reports see Year Books Nos. 9-16.) 



Part III of Professor Coble's series of articles on "Point Sets and 

 Cremona Groups" appeared in the Transactions of the American 

 Mathematical Society, Vol. XVIII, July 1917, pp. 331-372. Herein 

 the utility of the general idea was exemplified by a detailed application 

 to the classic problem of the lines on a cubic surface. The methods 

 indicated are quite different from those given by Klein and Burkhardt, 

 though ultimately of course the same functions and groups appear. 

 The next appUcation in order would be to the double tangents of a 

 plane quartic. This is not so immediate, because the various allied 

 problems have not yet been developed in good form. Thus no colline- 

 ation group isomorphic with the group of double tangents has been 

 discussed. This lack will be suppUed to some extent in the forth- 

 coming dissertation of C. C. Bramble. 



The hypothesis of a connection between the self -associated point 

 set P%+2 and the theta-modular functions of genus jp has been verified. 

 It appears that the infinite discontinuous coUineation group g^, k 

 of point sets II has invariant subgroups whose factor groups are 

 isomorhpic with known theta-modular groups. The nature of these 



