PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 163 



This paper will be found published in full in the Annual Report 

 of the United States Fish Commission for the year 1880. 



At the conclusion of Mr. Goode's paper the Society adjourned. 



199th Meeting. April 30, 1881. 



The President in the chair. 

 Forty-eight members present. 



The recorder of the minutes of the last meeting being absent 

 their consideration was postponed. 



Mr. W. H. Dall made a communication on 



RECENT DISCOVERIES IN ALASKA NORTH OF BEHRING STRAIT, 



in which he alluded to the investigations carried on by the U. S. 

 R. S. Corwin, Capt. Hooper, during the summer of 1880, including 

 meteorology, sea temperatures and currents, as well as the investi- 

 gation of the coal mines near Cape Lisburne. He described some 

 observations made by the U. S. Coast Survey party under his charge 

 in the same region and season, on board the U. S. S. Yukon. The mi- 

 gration of the Asiatic Eskimo ; the sources of the warm waters of the 

 eastern half of Behring Strait in Kotzebue and Norton Sound 

 waters, moved by the tidal and river flow ; the existence of a sup- 

 posed new species of sheep allied to the Rocky Mountain bighorn 

 (Ovis montana) in the east Siberian peninsula, aDd the character of 

 Arctic vegetations were spoken of. Reasons for doubting the truth 

 of the account of an alleged landing on Wrangell Land, in 1866, 

 described in the Bremen Geographical Society's publication by a 

 Capt. Dallmann were brought forward, and it was pointed out that 

 the existence of Plover Island, of Siberian musk-oxen, and of cer- 

 tain conditions of the ice alleged by Dallmann, were in conflict 

 with all that is definitely known by scientific men of those matters. 



Remarks upon this paper were made by Messrs. Antisell, 

 White, Farquhar, Harkness, Alvord, Mason, Hazen, Well- 

 ing, Abbe, Bessels, and Gill. 



Mr. J. S. Billings commenced a paper on Mortality Statistics 



