NAT OEURE 
501 
THURSDAY, MARCH 29, 1883 
THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION 
Proceedings of the American Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science. Thirteenth Meeting, held at Cincinnati, 
Ohio, August, 1881. (Salem: Published by the Per- 
manent Secretary, 1882.) 
iB the same year that the British Association for the 
Advancement of Science was celebrating its jubilee, 
this, its eldest daughter, had reached the mature age of 
thirty years. The volume which embodies the results of 
the Cincinnati meeting is considerably smaller than the 
corresponding one published on this side of the Atlantic. 
The latter, containing the reports and proceedings of the 
York meeting, is a bulky and closely-printed volume of 
824 pages, besides 82 pages of introductory matter and a 
list of members. The corresponding American volume 
only contains 416 pages, with about the same amount of 
introductory matter, in which the list of members is in- 
cluded. The ratio of the one to the other is even less 
than the above number indicates, for the type used in the 
American is on the whole larger than in the English 
volume, the smallness of which, in the Transactions, can 
-only be justified by the necessity for restricting the bulk 
of the volume. 
The American Association appears to be constituted 
very nearly on the same plan as the British, but there are 
some minor points of difference. The American consists 
of Members, Fellows, Patrons, and Honorary Fellows: 
of which the former two appear to correspond roughly 
with the Members and the General Committee of the 
British Association. A donation of one thousand dollars 
constitutes a Patron—only two persons, however, one of 
each sex, appear to have availed themselves of that 
avenue to distinction. The sections, or sub-sections, into 
which the Association divides itself for purposes of business 
at the time of meeting, are nine in number, as were those, 
including departments, at the York meeting of the British 
Association. But the distribution of the subjects differs. 
The American Association has a section for Physics 
separate from Mathematics and Astronomy, rendering 
permanent the fission which only occasionally takes place 
with us. Geology and Geography are placed in one section, 
which certainly would be found impracticable in Britain, 
as both these departments are in general well supplied 
with papers. Our Section D (Biology), with its three de- 
partments, Zoology and Botany, Anatomy and Physiology, 
and Anthropology, is divided in America into Biology, His- 
tology and Microscopy, and Anthropology. The remaining 
sections correspond exactly. The two most noteworthy 
differences in the American volume are the general absence 
of the Presidential addresses, so marked and often so 
valuable a feature of the British, and the small number of 
Special Committees (and consequently of their Reports). 
Only in the sub-sections of Entomology and of Anthro- 
pology is there any record of addresses by the chairmen, 
and there does not appear to have been any general ad- 
dress by the President of the whole Association. The 
number of Special Committees also is smaller than we 
should have expected. Of these we find but eight, ex- 
cluding those connected with executive business. They 
VOL. XXVII.—NO. 700 
are “ On Weights, Measures, and Coinage,” “ For Obtain- 
ing a New Survey of Niagara Falls,” “ On the Best Me- 
thod of Science Teaching in the Public Schools,” “On 
Standard Time,” “On Stellar Magnitudes,” ‘‘On State 
Geological Surveys,” and two others, the purpose of 
which seems a little singular to English readers, one being 
“ On the Registration of Deaths, Births, and Marriages” 
(the order of sequence seems a little curious), and a 
““Committee to cooperate with the American Philologica 
Association in relation to the proper restriction of the 
degree of Ph.D.,’’ a subject which, we imagine, even if 
the necessity existed here, the British Association would 
be a little shy of touching. 
It is of course difficult to express an opinion on the re- 
quirements of an American institution, but we cannot 
help thinking that as some of the most useful work of the 
British Association has been and is being done through 
its Committees, and that their reports (including those of 
individuals) are the most valuable part of its volume, the 
Transatlantic society would do well to develop this feature 
in its constitution. At the York meeting in 1881 thirty 
reports were read and forty-eight committees appointed. 
There were a considerable number of mathematical 
and physical papers read before the American Associa- 
tion, but of the majority only the titles are printed. Of 
the few reported at any length, one, we should have 
thought, would have been more appropriate placed in the 
section of Mechanics, as the mathematical reasoning is 
of the simplest kind. The conclusion, however, is in- 
teresting, for it shows, as the result of a number of experi- 
ments, that “timber may be injured by a prolonged 
stress, far within that which leaves the material uninjured 
when the test is made in the usual way, and occupies a 
few minutes only.” Bars of timber (most of the experi- 
ments were made with yellow pine) yielded and broke, 
generally suddenly, under loads below their average 
breaking weight under ordinary test. When the load was 
about three-fifths of the average breaking weight, it was 
sometimes a full year before they gave way. This sug- 
gests pleasant reflections for occupiers of newly-built 
“jerry” houses in London! 
Among the physiological papers there is one on a sub- 
ject which must, we think, be novel. It is entitled “A 
Study of Blood during a Long Fast” (by Lester Curtis, 
of Chicago). In May, 1881, a Mr. John Griscom, of 
Chicago, commenced a fast of forty-five days. The author 
was invited by the “managers” to make any investiga- 
tions that he pleased, and after satisfying himself that the 
fast was to be conducted honestly, he chose the blood 
as a subject of study. The first examination made, at the 
commencement of the fast, shortly after the patient had 
eaten his last meal, showed the red corpuscles abundant, 
bright coloured, pure in appearance, regular and smooth 
in outline. Four days afterwards two kinds were noticed, 
one pale, almost colourless, large, with a “sticky ” aspect, 
the other deeper in colour than the ordinary corpuscles, 
smaller and covered with nodules. By the fifth day the 
colourless corpuscles had disappeared, but they returned 
in a few days, and continued in greater or less amount 
to the end, The darker corpuscles assumed various 
shapes, and many very small ones appeared, apparently 
by subdivision of the larger. Their aspect was most ab- 
normal on the thirty-ninth day of the fast, when Mr. 
Z 
