180 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. Vir. No. 162. 



CHEMICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 



At the fourteenth annual meeting, held Jan- 

 ary 13th, the following officers were elected for 

 the ensuing year, viz. : President, Jlenry N. 

 Stokes ; Vice-Presidents, Peter Fireman, H. 

 Carrington Bolton ; Secretary, William H. 

 Krug ; Treasurer, W. P. Cutter ; Executive 

 Committee, the above and Charles E. Monroe, 

 E. A. de Schweinitz, Wirt Tassin, W. F. Hille- 

 brand. 



V. K. Chesnut, 

 Secretary pro tempore. 



BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON — 285TH 

 MEETING, SATURDAY, JANUARY 15. 



The major part of the evening was devoted 

 to ' A Symposium ou Recent Additions of Our 

 Knowledge of the Cell,' the subject being intro- 

 duced by Dr. Frank Baker, who gave a brief 

 rhumc of the successive discoveries in regard 

 to the structure of the cell, touching on the 

 theories of the alveolar and filar structures of 

 the cytoplasm and dwelling at some lengtla on 

 the changes which take place in the nucleus 

 during cell division. 



Messrs. David G. Fairchild, Herbert J. Web- 

 ber and Walter T. Swingle, who followed, pre- 

 sented the topic chiefly from a botanical stand- 

 point, showing that the processes of nuclear and 

 cell division were much more varied in plants 

 than among animals, and might be very differ- 

 ent, even taking place without the presence of 

 a centrosome. 



F. A. Lucas, 

 Secretary. 



BOSTON SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



The Society met December 15th, one hun- 

 dred and five persons present. 



Professor W. M. Davis, with the aid of a 

 series of lantern slides, gave a graphic account 

 of excursions from the Atlantic to the Pacific. 

 Some of the prominent physiographic features 

 of parts of New England, Niagara, the Lake 

 Superior Region, the Lake of the Woods, Lake 

 Simcoe, the Black Hills, the Canadian Rockies 

 and portions of the country along the Northern 

 Pacific Railroad were described and illustrated. 



A general meeting was held January 5th, 

 forty-two persons present. 



Mr. Frank Russell read some notes upon the 

 Athabascan Indians, as observed in the neigh- 

 borhood of the Great Slave Lake, on the Barren 

 Ground of Canada. The men devote themselves 

 to hunting, traveling in canoes and on snow 

 shoes ; the women are hard workers and, in 

 addition to all the household duties, prepare 

 the skins and make the garments. Personally 

 the men are more cleanly than the women. 

 Tattooing is not now practiced, and, under the 

 influence of the Roman Catholic missionaries, 

 polygamy has been abandoned ; the Athabas- 

 cans are Christians and Catholics. Mr. Russell 

 also described many Athabascan songS, their 

 music, the methods of camp making, and the 

 celebration at Easter, and closed with a series 

 of lantern views illustrating the physical type 

 of the tribe, their dwellings and some of their 

 habits and customs. 



Mr. John Murdoch said that the canoes, as 

 shown by Mr. Russell, were similar to those 

 used on the Yukon. 



Samuel Henshaw, 

 Secretary. 



NEW BOOKS. 



Text-book of Physical Chemistry. Clarence L. 

 Spbyers. New York, D. Van Nostrand Co. 

 1897. Pp. vii + 224. $2.26. 



The Mathematical Theory of the Top. Felix 

 Klein. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons. 

 1897. Pp. 74. 



A Short Handbook of Oil Analysis. Augustus 

 H. Gill. Philadelphia and London, J. B. 

 Lippincott Co. Pp. 139. 



Chapters on the Natural History of the United 

 States. R. W. Shufeldt. New York, Studer 

 Brothers. 1897. Pp. 472-|-Index. 



A Primer of Psychology. Edward Bradford 

 Titchener. New York and London, The 

 Macmillan Company. 1898. Pp. xvi+314. 

 $1.00. 



A Description of Minerals of Commercial Value. 

 D. M. Barringbr. New York and London, 

 Chapman & Hall, Ltd. 1897. Pp. 168. 



A. Ecker^s and B. Wiedersheim' s Anatomie des 

 Frosches. Revised by Ernst Gaupp. Braun- 

 schweig, Friedrich Vieweg und Sohn. 1896-7. 

 Pp. xiii+229 and ii+234. 



