192 JOURNAL OF THE WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES VOL. 13, No. 9 
Professor Leon Manovuvrisr, Ecole d’Anthropologie, Paris, France, was 
elected in recognition of his life-long work of the highest class in anthropology. 
Dr. Cart FREDERIK ALBERT CHRISTENSEN, Director of Universitetets 
Botaniske Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark, was elected in recognition of his 
services to systematic botany, particularly his monographic studies of tropical 
American ferns of the tribe Dryopterideae. 
Dr. Pau Marcuat, Chef de Section, Service des Epiphyties, Ministry of 
Agriculture of France, was elected in recognition of his investigations in 
biological problems and their relation to agriculture, and especially for his 
research work in polyembryony. ; 
Mr. Epwarp Ciayron ANDREWS, Government Geologist of New South 
Wales, Sydney, Australia, was recommended in recognition of his distin- 
guished work in geology, particularly in the fields of origin of coral reefs, 
physiography, origin of the Australian flora, mountain formation, and origin 
of metalliferous deposits. 
Sir Ernest RuTHERFORD, Director of the Cavendish Laboratory, University 
of Cambridge, England, was elected in recognition of his distinguished work 
in chemistry. ) 
F. Omori, Professor of Seismology, Imperial University, Tokyo, Japan, 
was elected in recognition of his outstanding work in the field of Seismology. 
Professor GuIsEPPI STEFANINI, Instituto di Studi Superiori, Pizza San 
Marco, Florence, Italy, was elected in recognition of his distinguished inves- 
tigations in paleontology and stratigraphy, especially the tertiary formations 
of Italy and echinoids in general. 
Professor Max Weper, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 
was elected in recognition of his distinguished work in zoology. 
The Biological Survey, U. 8. Department of Agriculture, has arranged with 
the Navy Department for transportation for a party of scientists who will 
make a general survey during the spring and summer of the plant and animal 
life on the chain of islands extending from Niihau in the Hawaiian group to 
Midway and Wake. Dr. ALEXANDER Wermore of the Biological Survey 
will have general direction of the scientific activities of the expedition, which 
will be carried on in part by members of the staff of the Bishop Museum, 
Honolulu. Donautp R. Dickry of Pasadena will accompany the party to 
secure moving pictures of the remarkable colonies of sea birds on Laysan 
Island. 
The speaker at the meetings of the Physics Club, Bureau of Standards, on 
March 19 and 26 was Dr. C. W. Kanotr, his subject being Relativity. 
In the first lecture the older or special theory was considered. This was 
developed by Einstein mainly as a result of the failure of the experiments of 
Michelson, Morley, and Miller to detect a motion of the earth relative to the 
ether. Einstein postulated the independence of phenomena in a system 
moving with uniform velocity of the velocity of the system, provided the 
phenomena are observed from within the system. He postulated that the 
velocity of light is constant under all conditions, which means that it must 
be the same in all directions, independent of the velocity of the source and 
independent of extraneous influences, including gravitation. He also assumed 
tacitly the accuracy of Euclidean geometry. Some of the deductions from 
this older theory were described. 
In the second lecture it was explained that the older theory did not agree 
with Newton’s law of gravitation, and that to harmonize the two and also 
to extend the conception of the relativity of space and time Einstein had 
