Febeuaey 24, 1899.] 



SCIENCE. 



297 



Upon the arrival of President Wilson, he read 

 his address as retiring President, giving a gen- 

 eral risume of the work of the Society during 

 the past year, and making some suggestions 

 about its future work. The importance was 

 also urged of establishing in the city of Birm- 

 ingham a School of Natural Sciences, in which 

 every youth in the limits of the city might 

 have the opportunity of acquiring some scien- 

 tific training, and especially in those branches 

 of science which bear upon the manufacture of 

 iron. The establishment of such a school would 

 cause similar schools to spring up in the smaller 

 towns and would be followed by industrial 

 growth. 



Papers were then read as follows : 'The Brown 

 Ores at Leeds, in Jefferson County,' by J.W. Cas- 

 tleman, of the Sloss Iron and Steel Co. In 

 this paper an account was given of the large 

 deposits of brown ore recently developed by the 

 Sloss company. 'On Trichina spiralis,' by Dr. 

 John Y. Graham, of the State University. This 

 paper, based upon original investigations by Dr. 

 Graham, was illustrated by charts and by spec- 

 imens under the miscroscope. 'On Roads and 

 Road Making,' by Colonel Horace Harding. 

 'British Columbia and its Mineral Resources,' 

 by Wm. M. Brewer. 'A Section through Red 

 Mountain,' by A. W. Haskell. 



The election of officers for the ensuing term 

 was then taken up, with the following result : 

 President, J. H. Pitts, of Tuscaloosa ; Vice- 

 Presidents, J. M. Garvin, of Rock Run, and 

 J. H. McCune, of Woodward ; Treasurer, Henry 

 McCalley, of the University of Alabama ; Sec- 

 retary, Eugene A. Smith, University of Ala- 

 bama. The Society then adjourned, to meet 

 again on May 3d, next. After the adjourn- 

 ment the members of the Society and their 

 invited guests partook of a banquet at the Mor- 

 ris Hotel. 



Eugene A. Smith, 



Secretary. 



DISCUSSION AND COBBESPONDENCE. 

 ETHEKION. 



To THE Editor of Science: In a recent 

 number of Science attention was called to 

 what appeared to be an unreasonable attitude 

 on the part of the editors of Nature towards 



Mr. Charles F. Brush's paper on Etherion, an 

 attitude, namely, which simply refused to accept 

 Mr. Brush's results until they were demon- 

 strated by the spectroscope. A recent criticism 

 by M. Smoluchowski de Smolan in Nature for 

 January 5th is, on the other hand, entirely rea- 

 sonable, being, as it is, a fair criticism of Mr, 

 Brush's work. The question whether heat 

 conductivity can demonstrate the existence of 

 an unknown thing, and the question whether 

 Mr. Brush really found a gas which had one 

 hundred times the thermal conductivity of 

 hydrogen at the same pressure, are very different. 

 It is this latter question which is raised by M. 

 de Smolan. It seems probable, indeed, that the 

 anomalous thermal conductivity found by Mr. 

 Brush may have been due to his not having 

 rigorously excluded water vapor, thus making 

 his pressure determinations uncertain. We 

 may soon expect an answer to this point from 

 Mr. Brush himself. 



W. S. Franklin. 



NOTES ON INORGANIC CHEMISTRY. 

 An extended research has been made by E. 

 Hintz on the effect of varying quantities of the 

 rare earths on the luminosity of the mantels for 

 the Welsbach burners. The results are pub- 

 lished in the Zeitschrift fur analytisclie Chemie. 

 Comparing the oxids of thorium and cerium 

 alone and mixed in varying proportions, and, 

 using for comparison the number of liters of gas 

 consumed per hour per Hefner light unit, it ap- 

 pears that the consumption for pure thoria is 

 50 and for pure ceria 61. With traces of ceria 

 in thoria the consumption decreases, Q.l'/o ceria 

 giving 6.7; 0.2%, 3.1, and 0.5%, 2.1. On the 

 other hand, thoria added to ceria has much 

 less effect, 30% thoria requiring 48 ; 60%, 31, 

 and 80%, 12. The minimum consumption, that 

 is, the greatest light efficiency, is reached with a 

 mixture of 99% thoria and 1% ceria, with which 

 the consumption of gas is only 1.4 liters per 

 hour per Hefner unit. Some decrease of effi- 

 ciency is noticed after several hundred hours' 

 use. As regards the addition of other oxids to 

 this 'normal' thoria-ceria mixture (99:1) 1% of 

 neodymia, lanthana, yttria or zirconia has no 

 effect; nor does 2% of the first three. Two 

 per cent, of zirconia, however, diminishes 



