538 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVII. No. 953 



Dr. Loeb pointed out that Weismann 's state- 

 ment that the somatic cells of Metozoa are mortal 

 is not warranted by the facts, the evidence leading 

 merely to the conclusion that somatic cells can 

 usually not reproduce the whole organism. In 1901 

 Dr. Loeb himself first announced that facts estab- 

 lished through experimental tumor investigation 

 made it very probable that tumor cells are poten- 

 tially immortal, as much so as Protozoa and germ 

 cells, and a few years later he concluded further 

 that, inasmuch as tumor cells are merely ordinary 

 somatic cells living under special conditions, the 

 proof had been supplied, as far as that can be 

 done, that ordinary somatic cells are potentially 

 immortal. He also pointed out that this conclu- 

 sion could be still further confirmed by serial trans- 

 plantations of ordinary tissues in animals of vari- 

 ous ages. He began such experiments a number of 

 years ago and is continuing this work now under 

 more favorable conditions. 



Experimental tumor investigation has further- 

 more demonstrated that many somatic cells have a 

 potential power to proliferate which appeared al- 

 most unthinkable until recent years, one single 

 epithelial or connective tissue cell being potentially 

 able to produce masses of cells which surpass 

 many times the number of cells composing a whole 

 animal of the same species. 



Investigations by M. S. Fleisher, in Dr. Loeb 's 

 laboratory, fail to show the definite rhythmic 

 changes attributed to tumors by Bashford and 

 Calkins, and Dr. Loeb thinks that if they exist in 

 the case of other somatic tissues, they are not pri- 

 mary attributes of these tissues, but due to sec- 

 ondary mechanisms. 



Professor Nipher stated to the Academy that he 

 had recently obtained results confirming his pre- 

 vious conclusion that the strength of a steel magnet 

 depends upon its electric potential. 



G. O. James, 

 Corresponding Secretary 



THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON 



The 467th regular meeting of the Anthropolog- 

 ical Society of Washington was held in room 43 

 of the new building of the National Museum at 

 4:30 P.M., March 18, 1913, the president, Mr. Stet- 

 son, in the chair. Dr. John E. Swanton read a 

 paper on ' ' The Creek Confederacy. ' ' 



After explaining the geographical and linguistic 

 positions of the tribes of the Creek confederacy 



with the assistance of a map. Dr. Swanton traced 

 the evolution of the confederation from a small 

 nucleus of tribes speaking the Muskogee lan- 

 guage to a large association, comprising a num- 

 ber of Hitehiti speaking people, the Alabama, 

 Koasati, some of the Apalachee and Yamaai, part 

 of the Natchez, the Yuchi, and, for a time, some 

 of the Shawnee. He showed that this association 

 was facilitated through the institution of a dual 

 division of towns into white or peace towns and 

 red or war towns, the towns of each division, or 

 "fire," considering each other friends or allies, 

 and having opposing but not warlike relations 

 with the towns of the other ' ' fire. ' ' It thus hap- 

 pened that when an outside town or tribe came 

 to be accepted as a "friend" of one of the white 

 or red towns in the confederacy its position with 

 reference to all of the other white and red towns 

 was thus established and it entered into the con- 

 federate scheme. The communication of other 

 common features to the new towns also took place, 

 although more slowly. Such features were the 

 ' ' green corn dance ' ' or busk, or perhaps rather 

 the Muskogee form of it, participation in com- 

 mon although irregular councils, and the adoption 

 of Muskogee as the standard language of inter- 

 communication. The actual discontinuance of the 

 proper languages of the various members of the 

 confederacy was, fortunately for the ethnologist, 

 much slower, several of them having persisted down 

 to the present day. Through the progressive adop- 

 tion of smaller tribes and the practical destruction 

 of some in warfare, a process accelerated by 

 white contact, the Creek confederacy came to be 

 almost the sole representative of eastern Musk- 

 hogean culture, and even influenced the culture 

 of the Chickasaw to a marked degree. The great 

 Choctaw body, on the other hand, maintained its 

 cultural independence and was never dominated 

 by the Creeks. In sharp contrast to the Creeks, 

 whose national structure was built up by fitting 

 numerous distantly related tribes into an arti- 

 ficial fraternal scheme, the Choctaw seem to have 

 owed their sense of unity to an actual homo- 

 geneity in the Choctaw population, the occupancy 

 of a common area, and the necessity to resist com- 

 mon enemies. They perhaps preserved the sim- 

 plicity of culture existing among all Muskhogean 

 Indians in times long anterior to the formation of 

 more complicated associations or confederacies. 

 There was no discussion. 



Wm. H. Babcock, 



Secretary 



