ASSOCIATIONS FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. (AMERICAN.) 23 



of tin- report of Committoe on Spelling ami Prommciii- 

 lion .!' Chemical Terms. 



I >. Mi i-lni nil-ill Sci< no' and I'J/it/ineering. This 

 section was presided over by Prof. John B. John- 

 MIII. who is connected with Washington Uni- 

 versity, St. Louis, Mo. His address was entitled 

 "The Applied Scientist." The distinction be- 

 tween I hr tlieoretical scientist and the practical 

 scientist was somewhat fully discussed and the 

 sphere nf cadi dearly defined, after which Prof. 

 Johnson very fully elaborated the value of the 

 practical scientist, especially in the application 

 of mechanical engineering to every-day expe- 

 riences. 



The following-named papers were read and 

 discussed before the section : 



" Kxhibition and Description of Combined Yard 

 and Meter Standard Bar " and u Investigation of a 

 21-fect Precision Screw," by William A. .Rogers; " On 

 tin- I'su of Long Steel Tapes in measuring Base Line," 

 bv K. S \Voo.l\vai\l;" Results of Municipal Ownership 

 or Gas Works in tlie United States during 1891," by Ed- 

 wan 1 \V. Ik-mis; "Description of a Transmission Dy- 

 namometer," by George W. Hough ; " Measurements of 

 Total Heats of Combustion" and "Use of Anemom- 

 eters for measuring Velocity of Air in Mines," by 

 David S. Jacobus; "Negative Specific Heats," by 

 DeVolson Wood ; " Bending Testa of Timber," by 

 J. Burkitt Webb ; " Method of measuring Loss of 

 Power and Drop of Pressure between Cylinders in 

 Multiple-cylinder Engine," by James E. Denton ; 

 " Steam Economy of the Engines of the Screw Ferry- 

 boat ' Bremen,' " by James E. Denton and David S. 

 Jacobus ; " Peculiar Visible Strain in Steel when 

 tote.l iii Tension, Compression, and Cross-break- 

 ing," and " Extensometer for measuring Distortion of 

 Specimens under Test," by John B. Jonnson ; " Rel- 

 ative Economy of the Single .Cylinder Air-com- 

 r with Cooling by a Spray of Water and the 

 I 'resent Economy of the Compound Compressors at 

 Qua de la Gare. Paris," by Fred. T. Cause ; " A New 

 Window-ventilating Appliance," by A. M. Rose- 

 brough. 



Also, a meeting of the Association of Mechan- 

 ical Engineering Teachers was held with this 

 section. 



E. Geology and Geography. This section was 

 presided over by Prof. Henry S. Williams, who 

 has recently been called to succeed the venerable 

 James D. Dana in the charge of the geology at 

 Yale University. His address had to do with 

 " The Scope of Palaeontology, and its Value to 

 Geologists." He said : " The scientific study of 

 fossils is scarcely a century old. It was not 

 until 17!M> that Cuvier ventured to say that cer- 

 tain fossil bones found in the Paris basin repre- 

 sented an extinct elephant. In 1819 William 

 Smith became famous by his assertions that rock 

 strata could be traced across the country by their 

 fossils. l*p to that time fossils had only been 

 regarded as curiosities. Deshayes, and later 

 William Lonsdale. were the first to demonstrate 

 the wide scope of the palaeontology and its inter- 



E fetation of the problems of geology. The old 

 iw under which fossils were studied considers 

 the significance of fossils as marks indicating 

 the strata to which they belong. The higher or 

 comparative palaeontology of Deshayes, Lyell, 

 and Lonsdale considers the relationship which 

 fossils bear to each other. It deals with the his- 

 tory of organisms, and is able to find in fossils 

 the evidence of the order of sequence of rocks 

 containing them. To the comparative palaeon- 



tologist, fossils are hieroglyphics which tellof the 

 habits, customs, migrations, and environments of 

 the successive races from the beginning of the 

 world. The stratigraphic order is important, 

 but the fossils are much more important than 

 stratigraphy to the correct interpretation of 

 geology. We owe to comparative pala-ontology, 

 and not to stratigraphy or lithology, the primary 

 classification of the geological scale and the 

 means of distinguishing the chronological posi- 

 tion of each formation. 



The following-named papers were read before 

 the section : 



" Terminal Moraines in New England," by Charle 

 H. Hitchcock; "A Passage in the History of the 

 Cuyahoga River," by Edward W. Claypole; "Notes 

 bearing upon the Changes of the Preglaeiul Drain- 

 age of Western Illinois and Eastern Iowa." by Frank 

 Leverett; "Extra-morainicDritt in New Jersey," by 

 Albert A. Wright: "The Volcanic Craters of the 

 United States," "The Homotoxic Relations of the 

 North American Lower Cretaceous," and " Recent 

 Geological Explorations in Mexico." by Robert T. 

 Hill ; " Palaeobotany of the Yellow Gravel at Bridge- 

 ton, N. J.," by Arthur Hollick ; " Presentation of 

 Samples from the Salt Mines of New York," by S. A. 

 Lattunore ; " The Mining, Metallurgical, Geological, 

 and Mineralogical Exhibits to be shown at the World's 

 Columbian Exposition," by George F. Kunz : " Cerro- 

 Viejo and its Cones of Volcanic Ejecta and Extrusion 

 in Nicaragua," by John Crawford ; " Pleistocene Ge- 

 ography "and " Distributions of the LaFayette Forma- 

 tion, by W J McGee ; " Submarine Valleys on Con- 

 tinental Slopes," by Warren Upham ; " Cenozoic Beds 

 of the Staked Plains of Texas," by Edward D. Cope ; 

 "Exhibitions of Guelph Fossils found in Rochester, 

 N. Y.," by Albert L. Arey : " The American Masto- 

 don in Florida," by John Kost ; " Some Problems of 

 the Mesabi Iron Ore," by N. H. Winchell ; and " The 

 Mathematics of Mountain Sculpture," by Verplanck 

 Colvin. 



F. Biology. The presiding officer of this sec- 

 tion was Prof. Simon H. Gage, of Cornell Uni- 

 versity, who discussed the ''Comparative Physi- 

 ology of Respiration." In the course of his ad- 

 dress he said : " While the fundamental idea is 

 probably true that respiration is in its essential 

 process a kind of combustion or oxidation, yet the 

 seat of this action is not the lungs or blood. The 

 microscopic forms have no lungs, no blood, and 

 many of them even no organs : they are, as has 

 been well said, organless organisms ; nd yet every 

 investigation since the time of Von Helmont has 

 rendered it more and more certain that every 

 living thing must in some way be supplied with 

 the vital air or oxygen, and that this is in some 

 way deteriorated by use; and the nearer investi- 

 gation approaches to the real life stuff or proto- 

 plasm it alone is found to be the true breather, 

 the true respirer ; and, f urt her, as was shown long 

 ago, if a frog is decapitated and some of its tis- 

 sue exposed in a moist place, it will continue to 

 take up oxygen and give out carbon dioxide, 

 thus apparently showing that the tissues of the 

 highly organized frog mav, under favorable con- 

 ditions, absorb oxygen directly from the sur- 

 rounding medium and return to it directly the 

 waste carbon dioxide. This shows conclusively 

 that it is the living substance that breathes, and 

 the elaborate machinery of lungs, heart, and 

 blood-vessels are only to make sure that the living 

 matter, far removed from the external air. shall 

 not be suffocated. Also, it has been found that 

 if some of the living tissue is placed in an at- 



