CXCVlll 



The effect on agriculture was such as was to be expected ; those crops 

 — especially wheat and hay — which, maturing just at that time, required 

 drier weather, suffered more or less, especially on low and level lands; 

 while the later crops, and, above all, corn, received a start which brought 

 abundance into every farmer's household. 



The effect of this extraordinary season on the general health was that 

 always experienced from the same causes. The complaints brought on by 

 excessive summer heat were not as prevalent nor as severe as in other 

 years; but malarious diseases, produced by excessive humidity, followed 

 by dry weather, were the great scourge of this whole region during the 

 latter part of summer and in the fall. The absence, however, of the second 

 morbific element, the heat, prevented them from becoming so pernicious 

 as we have sometimes seen them here. 



Messrs. G. N. Hitchcock and J. C. Parker, both of San Diego, 

 Cal., were elected Corresponding Members. 



January 17, 1876. 

 C. V. Riley, President, in the chair. 



Mr. Riley, as chairman of the Publication Committee, reported 

 the publication of another signature of the Transactions, and that 

 the Proceedings were in type up to the last meeting. 



The Corresponding Secretary read some correspondence, and 

 called attention to a paper of Prof. Riitimeyer, of Basle (a notice 

 of which appears in Nature^ December i6, 1875), on the discov- 

 ery, at Wetzikon, of traces of man in tlie inter-glacial coal-beds 

 of Switzerland. Riitimeyer has given a description of the re- 

 mains, with drawings, which seem to show clearly the existence 

 of man in one of the warm intervals of the glacial epoch. The 

 remains consisted of four pointed rods of wood, bearing evident 

 marks of cutting, while at one part of the rods are marks as if of 

 a string wound round and round them. 



Dr. Richardson exhibited a skull and some specimens of pot- 

 tery obtained from a mound "near the stock-yards" at East St. 

 Louis. The mound was about ten feet high, and forty feet in 

 diameter at its base. At a depth of six or seven feet, eighteen 

 skulls were found. The bodies had been laid in a circle, with the 

 heads outwards. Many of the skulls were fractured on the tem- 

 poral bone. He had also found eighteen graves in the bluffs on 

 the Belleville or "rock" road. These bones were found under 

 slabs of stone, with some article of pottery near the head. 



