JANUARY 19, 1912], 
which had not been burned recently. The 
locality was revisited in May and June, dur- 
ing which time there were no more fires, and 
the salamander hills were gradually settling 
down and disappearing, no new ones haying 
been made in the interval, apparently.” It 
would be very interesting to know if the re- 
lated species of the middle northwest, G. 
bursarius,” shows a similar reaction to prairie 
fires. Rotanp M. Harper 
THE AMERICAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY 
THE eighteenth winter meeting of the society 
was held at Columbia University on Wednesday 
and Thursday, December 27-28, 1911, the pro- 
gram occupying two sessions on each day. The 
total attendance was about seventy-five, including 
sixty-three members. President H. B. Fine occu- 
pied the chair, being relieved by ex-President H. 
S. White. The following new members were ad- 
mitted: Professor Ida Barney, Rollins College; 
Professor Louis Brand, University of Cincinnati; 
Professor C. W. Cobb, Amherst College; Professor 
J. C. Fitterer, University of Wyoming; Mr. G. H. 
Graves, Columbia University; Dr. Solomon Lef- 
schetz, University of Nebraska; Mr. G. H. Light, 
Purdue University; Mr. E. S. Palmer, Rutgers 
College; Professor E. R. Smith, Pennsylvania 
State College. Night applications for membership 
were received. The total membership of the so- 
ciety is now 669, an increase of 27 during the past 
year. 
On Wednesday evening forty-two of the mem- 
bers gathered at the annual dinner at the Murray 
‘Hill Hotel. These informal dinners have long 
been recognized as one of the most attractive 
features of the meetings. 
The treasurer’s report shows a balance of $8,- 
723.89, or deducting outstanding bills, about $8,200, 
a slight increase for the year. The income from 
sales of publications was $1,513.66. The life mem- 
bership fund now amounts to $4,137.17. The 
number of papers read at all meetings of the year 
was 180; the total attendance of members was 
350. At the annual election 197 votes were cast. 
“Tn June Mr. A. H. Howell set traps in several 
of these hills, but without catching anything, which 
seems to indicate that the animals were not work- 
ing near the surface at that time. 
* Since Dr. Merriam’s monograph some addi- 
tional notes on the habits of this species have been 
published by Mr. C. L. Webster in the American 
Naturalist, 31, pp. 114-120, 1897. 
SCIENCE 
119 
The society’s library has increased to 3,840 vol- 
umes, beside some 500 unbound dissertations. 
At the annual election, which closed on Thurs- 
day morning, the following officers and other mem- 
bers of the council were chosen: Vice-presidents, 
H. F. Blichfeldt and Henry Taber; Secretary, F. 
N. Cole; Treasurer, J. H. Tanner; Librarian, D. 
E. Smith; Committee of Publication, F. N. Cole, 
EK. W. Brown and Virgil Snyder; Members of the 
Council (to serve until December, 1914), A. B. 
Coble, E. W. Davis, Oswald Veblen and E. B. 
Wilson. ; 
The following papers were read at this meeting: 
W. M. Smith: ‘‘A characterization of isogona 
and equitangential trajectories.’’ ; 
C. L. E. Moore: ‘‘Surfaces in hyperspace which 
have a tangent line with three-point contact pass- 
ing through each point.’’ 
J. E. Rowe: ‘‘How to find a set of invariants 
for any rational curve of odd order.’ 
J. E. Rowe: ‘‘A covariant point of the R*, and 
a special canonical form. ’’ 
R. L. Moore: ‘‘On the sufficient conditions that 
an integral equation of the second kind shall have 
a continuous solution.’’ 
E. B. Wilson: ‘‘Some mathematical aspects of 
telativity.’’ | 
Edward Kasner: ‘‘Families of surfaces related 
to an arbitrary deformation of space.’’ 
H. B. Phillips and ©. L. E. Moore: ‘Algebra 
of plane projective geometry.’’ 
Anna L, Van Benschoten: ‘‘Products of quad- 
ric inversions and linear transformations in space’’ 
(preliminary report). 
Arthur Ranum: ‘‘N-dimensional spreads gen- 
erated by 00? flats.’’ 
O, E. Glenn: ‘‘Generalizations of a theorem on 
reducible quantics, due to Hisenstein.’? 
KF. R. Sharpe: ‘‘Finite groups of birational 
transformations in the plane.’’ 
John Hiesland: ‘‘On a flat spread-sphere geom- 
etry in an odd dimensional space.’’ 
C. N. Moore: ‘‘The summability of the double 
Fourier series, with applications. ’’ 
S. E. Slocum: ‘‘A general formula for torsional 
deflection.’’ 
G. A. Miller: ‘‘Groups which contain a given 
number of operators whose orders are powers of 
the same prime.’’ 
R. G. D. Richardson: ‘‘Theorems of oscillation 
for three self-adjoint linear differential equations 
of the second order with three parameters.’’ 
L. A. Howland: ‘‘ Points of undulation of alge- 
braie curves. ’’ 
