244 Proceeding's 



attenuation depends upon frequency in case of fluid friction without 

 inertia, but it is independent of frequency in case of inertia without 

 fluid friction. Such unequal attenuation in the telephone obliterates 

 to a greater or less extent tones of high pitch before it does those of 

 lower pitch. It is therefore necessary to distinct transmission that the 

 self induction of the line should be large enough to store a large 

 amount of kinetic and potential energy in the wave motion along the 

 line, which in all its aspects is strictly analogous to the wave motion 

 propagated in the water in the apparatus just described. 



261st Meeting, October 7, 1902. 



Public Library; President Plall presiding. 



Seven persons present. 



A committee of Messrs Gale, Winchell, Eddy, and Hall 

 was appointed to consider the property interests of the Acad- 

 ^emy. 



F. C. Kent, H. L. Lyons, and F. K. Butters were elected 

 members. 



O. W. Oestlund read a paper on the Classification of In- 

 sects. 



[abstract.] 



A preliminary account was given on an extended work on the 

 classification of insects. Attention was called to the value of some 

 of the early writers on the taxonomy of insects as interpreted from 

 a modern standpoint. Linne in his first edition of his Sytema Na- 

 turae divided the insects into three orders, (excepting the Aptera) : 

 1, Coleoptera. including the Orthoptera. 2. Hemiptera. 3. Angiop- 

 tera, indicating three main divisions of the class. In later editions 

 Linne did not recognize the broad characters of the Angioptera. 

 Latreille gave more exact interpretation to the same idea in his division 

 of the orders in two main groups, the Elytroptera (including Orthop- 

 tera, Coleoptera, and Hemiptera), and Gymnoptera, equivalent to 

 Linne's Angioptera. 



It was pointed out that the so-called incomplete and complete met- 

 amorphosis has not the taxonomic value usually ascribed to it in divid- 

 ing the insects into two series, the Heterometabola and the Holometa- 

 bola. Metabolism is characteristic of the class and is undoubtedly 

 monophyletic. The heterometabola are more primitive than the hol- 

 ometabola, but the holometabolous condition is polyphyletic, arising 

 separately in several cases as in the Coleoptera, the males of the Coc- 

 cidae, and probably also for the Hymenoptera. 



Paleontology also indicates some fundamental characters in the 

 fact that the Paliodictyoptera contain three distinct lines of develop- 

 ment: the Orthopteroidea, Hemipteroidea, and Neuropteroidea of Scud- 

 der. From the Orthopteroidea line of development we have the mod- 



