Editorial Notes. 
Dr. George I. Adams has published in the American Journal of Science for 
1897 a short article on Extinct Felide. 
Mr. Paul Wilkinson has published in the Transactions of the American Institute 
of Mining Engineers an article on The Technology of Cement Plaster. 
Professor H. B. Newson has in a recent Bulletin of the American Mathematical 
Society, December, 1897, an article on Continuous Groups of Circular Trans- 
formations. 
The /ndustrialist, from the Kansas State Agricultural College, appears in 
magazine form with the first issue of the year 1898. While retaining something 
of its former character as a local bulletin and reporter for the college, the 
Industrialist will henceforth serve in the Agricultural College the same function 
as the QuaRTERLY inthe State University. The institution is to be congratulated 
on the achievement and its promise. 
Dr. George O. Virtue has in the U.S Bulletin of the Department of Labor for 
November an article on The Anthracite Mine Laborers. Dr. Virtue has made a 
study of the whole anthracite industry. 
Ueber den Hermite’schen Fall der Lamischen Differentialgleichung. Inaugural- 
Dissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwuerde der hohen Philosophischen Facultaet 
der Georg-Augusts Universitaet zu Goettingen, vorgelegt von Mary Frances 
Winston aus Chicago. Goettingen, 1897, pp. 84 and 32 plates. 
This publication by Miss Winston, the new professor of Mathematics in the 
Kansas State Agricultural College, is in all respects worthy of that lady's reputation 
as a mathematician. It contains a detailed and exhaustive study of one of the 
most important differential equations arising in mathematical physics and it is 
thus a substantial contribution to the world’s stock of useful knowledge. This 
thesis contains besides a theoretical discussion of the equation an application of 
the results to the mechanics of the spherical pendulum and to the theory of the 
top. 
Lame’s differential equation 
d?y SA A | : . 
ngs co p(t) +B ly where A=n (n-+1); (Nn is any integer) and P(t)—=x. 
is linear of the second order and first appears in connection with the problem of 
heat conduction in a solid body. The integration of this equation has taxed the 
ingenuity of a generation of mathematicians. In 1874 the now venerable Hermite 
of Paris published his solution by means of elliptic functions. Hermite’s results 
are complicated formulae which render it possible to compute the values of y for 
any given value of x. In order to grasp the significance of Hermite’s solution it 
is necessary to have a geometrical representation of the results reached. Miss 
Winston has plotted the real curves representing the integrals for many special 
cases and these curves are here reproduced in 32 costly plates. 
The application to the theory of the top is most interesting. When Prof. Klein 
of Goettingen visited Princeton University in October, 1896, he was asked to 
(39) KAN. UNIV. QUAR., VOL. VII, NO. 1, JAN., 1898, SERIES A 
