460 



NA TURE 



[September 14, 1893 



THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION. 



ly/r ADISON, Wisconsin, at which the forty-second meeting 

 ■'■'■'■ of the American Association for the Advancement of 

 Science was held, August 17 to 22, is a beautiful little Univer- 

 sity town, surrounded by clear, glacial lakes, and is the capital 

 of the State of Wisconsin. 



Several causes conspired to reduce the attendance of members 

 at this meeting — the distraction of the World's Fair at Chicago, 

 the financial stringency, and the remoteness of the place of 

 meeting from the sea-board, where most of the members reside ; 

 but it was characterised by an earnest tone and an excellent 

 quality of scientific work. 



At the opening session the retiring President, Prof. Joseph 

 Le Conte, gracefully introduced his successor, Prof. William 

 Harkness, by remarking that while he represented geology, the 

 president- elect represented astronomy : one the oldest, the other 

 among the youngest of sciences ; one concerned with the uni- 

 verse of space, the other with the universe of time; one with 

 the law of gravitation, the other with that of evolution ; one 

 with the divine method of sustentation, the other with the divine 

 method of creation of the universe. 



Addresses of welcome followed by Major Corscot, General 

 Lucius Fairchild, chairman of the local committee, and Presi- 

 dent C. K. Adams, of the University of Wisconsin, where the 

 meeting was held. The latter gave a brief account of the use 

 of the University, which has always made science prominent, 

 and remarked that we are doubtless on the eve of wonderful 

 discoveries. Physics and chemistry bring us near to the ulti- 

 mate analysis of matter. 



President Harkness, in replying, referred among other things 

 to the British A socialion for the Advancement of Science as the 

 pioneer of all such organisations. The reports of the condition 

 of science at its organisation, over sixty years ago, were still 

 valuable, and the early star catalogues made under its auspices 

 were a valuable contribution to advancing science. The matter 

 of nomenclature of electrical units was settled by the British 

 Association, and the names, watt, ohm, ampere volt, now uni- 

 versally adopted, originated there. 



Thursday afternoon was occupied with the addresses of the 

 several vice-presidents, some of which will be printed in full in 

 later numbers of Nature. The generally high order of these 

 addresses was matter of comment among members. The sub- 

 jects presented were " Variations of Latitude," by C. L. Doo- 

 little ; " Phenomena of the Time Infinitesimal," by E. L. 

 Nichols ; " Twenty-five Years' Progress in Analytical Chemis- 

 try," by Edward Hart; "Training in Engineering Science," 

 by S. W. Robinson; " Geological Time as indicated by the 

 Sedimentary Rocks in North America," by C. D. Walcott ; 

 " Rise of the Mammalia," by PL F. Oiborn ; "Evolution and 

 Classification," by C. E. Bessey ; "The Biloxi Indians of 

 Louisiana," by J. O. Dorsey ; " The Mutual Relations of 

 Science and Stoclj Breeding," by Mrs. H. Brewer. 



The annual address by the retiring president, Prof. Joseph 

 Le Conte, in the evening, on " Present State of Science on the 

 subject of the origin of mountain ranges," was a masterly pre- 

 sentation of that difficult problem by an authority recognised as 

 such throughout the world. The evening sessions were held in 

 the capitol. 



The mornings and afternoons of Friday, Monday, and Tues- 

 day were occupied with reading of papers in the several sections. 

 On Friday evening Dr. Daniel G. Brinton lectured on "The 

 Earliest Men," reviewing the latest discoveries of anthropolo- 

 gists. He localises the first habitat of man in southern Europe 

 or northern Africa, or on the continuation of these latitudes in 

 western or central southern Asia. Man seems to have been 

 evolved per sallum from the highest anthropoid animal in the 

 glacial, or possibly just before the glacial epoch, giving an an- 

 tiquity of 50,000 to 100,000 years. The earliest men, so far as 

 can be ascertained, walked erect, had full foreheads, red hair, 

 and blue or gray eyes, were about of the same size and general 

 appearance as now, perhaps were not even hairy, were kind to 

 each other, social and artistic, had some sort of language, and 

 knew how to make fire. Dr. Brinton's lecture, startling to the 

 uninitiated by the boldness .of his conjectures, derived added 

 interest from his subsequent election as president of the associa- 

 tion. As an anthropDlogist and anthropological writer, he his 

 long occupied a front rank. He is a resident of Philadelphia, 

 and a graduate of Yale in the class of 1858. He is a physician 

 by profession, and a native of Chester County, Pennsylvania, 

 where he was born in 1837. 



NO. 1246, VOL. 48] 



The social features of the meeting were thoroughly delightful. 

 The excursion to which Saturday was devoted deserves special 

 mention, both for its pleasant relaxation and for the scientific 

 interest of the region visited. Taking the cars of the Milwaukee 

 and St. Paul railroad, a favourite tourist route, well known in 

 England as well as in America, which is the only railroad lead- 

 ing to the scenic wonderland selected by the local committee as 

 the best exhibit they could make to their guests, the association 

 first passed through the remarkable driftless area ten or fifteen 

 miles from the city. This is a region much studied by geolo- 

 gists as one which escaped the ice covering which extended oyer 

 all the rest of the country during the glacial epoch. A ride of 

 an hour and a half brought the train to Kilbourn city, where 

 steamboats were taken up the Wisconsin river a di-,tance of 

 several miles, through "the dells" of that river, which are an 

 expression of erosion resulting from a diversion » f the Wisconsin 

 river from its pre-glacial channel by the ice, and by the massive 

 moraines which it produced. The rocks are Cambrian sand- 

 stone, and they show false bedding on a maj;,n'ficent scale. 



The places for several subsequent meetings of the association 

 seem to be pretty clearly indicated, though no appointments 

 were absolutely made. The new building of the Brooklyn 

 Institute furnishes a good occasion for a meeting at Brooklyn 

 next year, especially since that is now the only large city in the 

 United States and Canada which has never been visited, If we 

 except San Francisco, to which cordial invitations for a meeting 

 in 1895 have already been received. The policy of the associa- 

 tion, ever since its reorganisation at Buffalo in 1866, has been 

 to hold decennial meetings at that city, so that 1896 also seems 

 to be thus provided for. 



The officers elected for next year are — president, Daniel G. 

 Brinton, Media, Pa. ; vice-presidents (Section A), Geo. C. 

 Comstock, Madison, Wis. ;(B) William A. Rogers, Waterville, 

 Me. ; (C) Thomas H. Norton, Cincinnati, O. ; (D) Mansfield 

 Merriman, South Bethlehem, Pa. ; (E) Samuel Cnlvin, Iowa 

 City, Iowa; (F) Samuel H. Scudder, Cambridge, Mass. ; (G) 

 Lucien M. Underwood, Greencastle, Ind. ; (H) Franz Boas, 

 Worcester, Mass. ; (I) Henry Farquhar, Washington, D.C. ; 

 permanent secretary, F. W. Putnam, Cambridge, Mass. ; 

 general secretary, H. L. Fairchild, Rochester, N.Y. ; secretary 

 of the council, J. L. Howe, Louisville, Ky. ; secretaries of the 

 sections ; (A) W. W. Beman, Ann Arbor, Mich. ; (B) Benjamiii 

 W. Snow, Madison, Wis. ; (C) S. M. Babcock, Madison, Wis. ; 

 (D) John H. Kinealy, St. Louis, Mo. ; (E) Wm. M. Davis, Cam- 

 bridge, Mass. ; (F) Wm. Libbey, jun. , Princeton, N.J. ; (G) 

 Charles R. Barnes, Madison, Wis. ; (H) Alexander F. Cham- 

 berlain, Worcester, Ma^s. ; (I) Manly Miles, Lansing, Wich. ; 

 treasurer, Wm. Lilly, Manch Chunk, Pa. 



In Section A (.\stronomy and Mathematics) most of the 

 papers were as usual highly technical. The president of the 

 section. Prof. Doolittle, carried on the line of thought presented 

 in his annual address, by a paper on " Latitude Determination 

 at Bethlehem in 1892-3," in which he stated that the fluctuation 

 in latitude thus far noticed does not exceed about 0.4", being 

 therefore less than fifty feet. 



An interesting session was held at the Observatory, wherethe 

 astronomer in charge. Prof. George C. Comstock, read a paper 

 on " A Determination of the Constant of Aberration," and 

 exhibited the instrument employed. It is a modified form o( 

 the Loewy prism apparatus, attached to a six-inch equatorial 

 telescope. The principal element of the apparatus is a system 

 of mirrors so placed before the objective as to reflect into the 

 telescope images of the stars which are to be observed. As in 

 the case of a sextant, images of two stars are simultaneously 

 visible, and the apparatus may be regarded as a large reflecting 

 instrument employed like a sextant for the measurement of the 

 angular distance between stars, but subject to the limitation that 

 the distances to be measured must diflTer but little from 12a'' 

 What is thus lost in range of application is compensated by the 

 high degree of precision attainable with the apparatus, a dis- 

 cussion of nearly a thou^^and observations indicating o"'3 as the 

 (.robable error for a single measured distance. 



A preliminary discussion of a portion of these observ.alions 

 published in 1892 furnished for the value of the constant of aber- 

 ration 20" '494. A more timorous discussion of the whole body 

 ofdat.a, taking into account a possible annual variation in the 

 amount of the atmospheric refraction, furnishes a value differing 

 from the preceding by less than a thou andth of a second of arc; 

 .but this result cannot be considered definitive, since a con- 

 parisonofthe measured distances with values computed from 

 the known right ascensions and declinations of the stars, indi- 



