614 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. VII. No. 175. 



able place for the sessions. In view of the 

 relations of the National Academy to the 

 government, it would seem proper that a 

 building, or at least an auditorium and 

 committee rooms, should be provided for its 

 use. Other societies could then be per- 

 mitted to occupy them when the Academy 

 was not in session. It is, however, possible 

 that the "Washington Academy of Sciences 

 may be able to provide such a building. 



The business sessions of the Academy, in 

 accordance with an excellent plan adopted 

 two years ago, were held in the mornings, 

 while the sessions for the reading of scien- 

 tific papers, to which the public is invited, 

 were in the afternoons. The scientific pro- 

 gram was as follows : 



I. The Coral Eeefs o£ Fiji, . . A. Agassiz. 

 II. The Fiji Bololo, 



A. Agassiz and W. McM. "Woodwoeth. 



III. The Acalephs of Fiji, 



A. Agassiz and A. G. Mayer. 



IV. The Variation in Virulence of the Colon 



Bacillus, J. S. Billings. 



V. Biographical Memoir of Edward D Cope. 

 Theo. Gill. 

 VI. New Classification of Nautiloidea, 



Alpheus Hyatt. 

 VII. A New Spectroscope, A. A. Michelson. 

 VIII. On the Hydrolysis of Acid Amides, 



lEA Eemsen and E. E. Eeid. 

 IX. The Question of the Existence of Active 



lEA Remsen and W. A. Jones. 



X. On the Product formed by the Action of 



Benzenesul-phonchloride on Urea, 



lEA Remsen and J. W. Lawson. 



XI. On Double Halides containing Organic 



Bases, Iea Remsen. 



XII. McCrady's Gymnophthalmata of Charles- 

 ton Harbor, W. K. Brooks. 



XIII. Ballistic Galvanometry with a Counter- 



twisted Torsion System, 



Cael Baeus. 



XIV. A Consideration of the Conditions gov- 



erning Apparatus for Astronomical 

 Photography, Chaeles S. Hastings. 

 XV. The Use of Graphic Methods in Ques- 

 tions of disputed Authorship, with an 

 Application to the Shakespeare-Bacon 

 Controversy, . . T. C. Mendenhall. 



XVI. A Method for Obtaining a Photographic 

 Record of Absorption Spectra, 



A. W. Weight. 

 XVII. Theories of Latitude Variation, 



H. Y. Benedict. 



Presented by A. Hall. 



XVIII. Progress in the New Theory of the Moon's 



Motion, E. W. Beown. 



Introduced by S. Newcomb. 

 XIX. On the Variation of Latitude and the 

 Aberration-Constant, 



Charles L. Doolittle. 

 Introduced by S. C. Chandlee. 

 XX. A Curious Inversion in the Wave Mechan- 

 ism of the Electromagnetic Theory of 

 Light, Cael Baeus. 



Many of the papers were technical in 

 character, and the authors did not attempt 

 to read them iu full, but only gave 'a gen- 

 eral outline of the results. Several of the 

 papers were, however, of general interest. 

 Professor Agassiz described in some detail 

 the important results of his recent visit to 

 the islands and coral reefs of the Fiji group. 

 He took with him in the ' Taralla ' boring 

 apparatus, but became convinced that the 

 borings made by Professor Sollas and by 

 Professor David on the Atoll of Funafuti 

 do not corroborate the theory of Dana and 

 Darwin — that the atolls and barrier reefs 

 have been formed by the subsidence and 

 disappearance of the central island — but 

 that the great thickness of the coral was 

 merely the base of an ancient reef. Pro- 

 fessor Agassiz found, to his surprise, that 

 the Fiji islands are not in an area of subsi- 

 dence, but, on the contrary, in an area of 

 elevation, reefs being found far above the 

 level of the sea, the elevation amount- 

 ing to upwards of 800 feet. It was argued 

 that the atolls and reefs can be satisfac- 

 torily accounted for by denudation and 

 erosion, in some cases of extinct vol- 

 canic craters. In a second paper Professor 

 Agassiz described the sudden appearance of 

 the annelid 'Bololo' at Levuka. It ar- 

 rives on a certain day in such numbers that 

 the surface of the water resembles thick 



