592 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXIX. No. 745 



Professor C. M. Woodward was elected a mem- 

 ber of the sectional committee. 



Professor Mansfield Merriman was elected a 

 member of the general committee. 



Mr. J. F. Hayford was elected vice-president 

 for the ensuing year. 



The program consisted of eight papers read by 

 their authors, five papers read by the secretary 

 in the absence of the authors and three papers 

 read by title in the absence of the authors. 



The vice-presidential address which was to have 

 been given by Professor O. H. Landreth on the 

 subject "Governmental Control of Public Waters" 

 was omitted on account of the unavoidable and 

 unexpected absence of Professor Landreth. The 

 address will be published in full in a later number 

 of Science. 



Mr. B. R. Green, of the Library of Congress, 

 Washington, D. C, in speaking on the subject 

 " Library Book Stacks without Daylight," said 

 in substance that daylight is extremely variable, 

 uncertain and expensive to secure in the construc- 

 tion of a library book stack. At best it is injuri- 

 ous to the books. At least it is almost useless. 

 Stacks must be used much at night, requiring 

 artificial illumination. The modern electric light 

 solves the difficulty, and, at small expense, enables 

 the stack to be built and enclosed anywhere and 

 be perfectly illuminated at any and every desired 

 point within it at any time of day or night. 

 During the discussion the writer pointed out the 

 great economy of space which can be effected 

 where dependence is not placed upon daylight, and 

 cited dimensions and other data from additions to 

 the stack space recently made in the Library of 



■ The Testing of Transformer Steel " was pre- 

 sented by Mr. M. G. Lloyd, of the Bureau of 

 Standards, Washington, D. 0. In his paper he 

 described a new apparatus for determining the 

 constants of transformer steel, which apparatus 

 is a modification of the Epstein apparatus, and 

 presented tabulated and charted results obtained 

 with the new apparatus from ordinary steels and 

 from the special alloy steels now being used for 

 transformer cores. 



Mr. J. H. Hayford in demonstrating that " It is 

 not Necessary to Place Geodetic Ares in Various 

 Latitudes " said, in eff'ect, that the idea seems to 

 prevail that, in order to determine the flattening 

 of the earth from geodetic measurements it is 

 necessary to make the measurements in various 

 latitudes. The basis for this idea is that the 

 flattening must be determined by measuring radii 



of curvature of the spheroid which differ consider- 

 ably from each other, and that arcs of the merid- 

 ian in high latitudes, near the poles, have rela- 

 tively long radii of curvature and those near the 

 equator relatively short radii. But the attention 

 should not be confined to arcs of the meridian. 

 Since the introduction of the telegraphic method 

 of determining longitudes, arcs of the parallel are 

 as important as arcs of the meridian. 



The flattening may be determined by measuring 

 the difference of the radii of curvature of two 

 arcs in any latitude, one an arc of the meridian 

 and the other an arc of the parallel. The meas- 

 urement of the latter determines the radius of 

 curvature of the spheroid in the prime vertical 

 plane, which, in all parts of the United States, is 

 much longer than the radius of curvature in the 

 meridian. The prime vertical radius is longer in 

 latitude 49° than the meridian radius in latitude 

 67°. By utilizing measurements of both arcs of 

 meridians and arcs of parallels made within the 

 United States as great a difference of radii can be 

 secured as from arcs of the meridian alone, scat- 

 tered from latitude 26° in southern Florida to 

 latitude 67° in noithern Alaska, and three fourths 

 as great a difference as can be secured from arcs 

 of the meridian scattered from the equator to the 

 poles. 



These and other considerations indicate that 

 progress is to be made in determining the flatten- 

 ing of the earth from geodetic measures, by se- 

 curing large continuous areas of triangulation 

 well supplied with astronomic observations, these 

 areas to be in the most convenient localities, 

 rather than by securing measurements of arcs of 

 the meridian scattered through a large range in 

 latitude. 



Mr. J. Burkitt Webb, of Hoboken, N. J., dis- 

 cussed the subject of " House Warming." The 

 following is an abstract of his remarks: 



Direct and indirect heating, or heating by radi- 

 ation and convection were compared and the 

 former held most natural and preferable; the 

 poisonous nature of the air of the ordinary hot- 

 air furnace was exposed and compared with the 

 wholesome effect of a fireplace, and hot water or 

 steam heat discussed as a mean between the two. 



The relative advantages of steam and hot water 

 and the methods of installing these systems; the 

 position, shape and color of radiators; the meth- 

 ods of generating and distributing the steam or 

 hot water, and the method of regulation were 

 discussed. 



Professor C. N. Ricker, of Urbana, 111., in a 

 paper entitled " A Study of Plain Metal Base and 



