1888. | NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 21 
extended to the President and Faculty of Rutgers Female Col- 
lege, for their courtesy in granting the use of their parlors for 
the reception. 
THE PRESIDENT spoke of the arrangements made by the Na- 
tional Academy of Sciences for the meeting of the International 
Geological Congress, to be held at Philadelphia, in 1891. 
Pror. MARTIN exhibited, in behalf of Mr. G. F. Kunz, two 
peculiar specimens of mingled feldspar and dolomite, recently 
found by Mr. Wo. Niven, in the cutting for the ship canal at 
Kingsbridge. The feldspar is the fetid variety, known as nec- 
rouite, and has been reported before as found at Thompson’s 
quarries in the same neighborhood. The dolomite, however, is 
new to the island; as it, like the feldspar, is fetid. On the 
slightest rubbing of two pieces together, a strong odor is devel- 
oped, which is compared by some to sulphuretted hydrogen, and 
by others to arsenic vapor. 
Mr. Kunz also announced that among the yellow titanites 
found by Mr. NIVEN on the site for the Old Men’s Home, at 
Fort George, N. Y. City, was one piece which Mr. NIvEN had 
had cut into a small gem, weighing about } karat, and quite bril- 
liant, although hardly equal to the same material from Tavetsch- 
thal, Switzerland. 
Pror. HuBBArD exhibited a fine polished specimen of rutile 
in quartz, from a boulder of unknown origin found many years 
ago in New Hampshire. 
Dr. Franz Boas read the paper of the evening, entitled: 
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE MAP OF THE UNITED STATES. 
The subject was treated at some length, especially in relation 
to the difficulties and necessary inaccuracies caused by the rep- 
resentation of a curved surface upon a plane, and the various 
methods employed to obviate those difficulties and reduce the 
- deviations from nature as far as possible to a minimum. 
