APRIL 12, 1912] 
usual morning and afternoon sessions. The at- 
tendance included forty-one members. President 
H. B. Fine occupied the chair. The council an- 
nounced the election of the following persons to 
membership in the society: Mr. J. W. Alexander, 
Princeton University; Mr. A. A. Bennett, Prince- 
ton University; Professor J. G. Coffin, College of 
the City of New York; Professor G. H. Cresse, 
Middlebury College; Mr. C. R. Dines, Dartmouth 
College; Professor H. E. Jordan, University of 
Kansas; Mr. F. S. Nowlan, Columbia University; 
Professor C. W. Watkeys, University of Rochester. 
Hight applications for membership in the society 
were received. 
Announcement was made of the gift of Dr. 
Emory McClintock, second president of the society, 
of over four hundred valuable books to the library. 
The gift also includes a large number of pam- 
phlets and reprints of important mathematical 
papers. 
The following papers were read at this meeting: 
S. A. Joffe: ‘‘Sums of like powers of natural 
numbers. ’’ 
G. A. Miller: ‘‘Second note on groups generated 
by operators transforming each other into their 
inverses. ’? 
S. Lefschetz: ‘‘On remarkable points of curves.’’ 
S. E. Urner: ‘‘Certain singularities of point 
transformations in space of three dimensions. ’’ 
A. B. Coble: ‘‘The characteristic theory of the 
odd and even theta functions as related to finite 
geometry.’ 
H. H. Mitchell: ‘‘Some quaternary groups with 
particular prime moduli.’’ 
J. E. Rowe: ‘‘The undulation and cusp in- 
variants of the R”.’’ 
W. F. Osgood: ‘‘A necessary and sufficient con- 
dition that a single-valued function in a projective 
space be rational.’’ 
Dunham Jackson: ‘‘On the convergence of the 
development of a continuous function according to 
Legendre’s polynomials. ’”’ 
K. P. Williams: ‘‘The solution of non-homo- 
geneous linear difference equations and their 
asymptotic forms.’’ 
E. J. Miles: ‘‘Note on the isoperimetric prob- 
lem with discontinuous integrand.’’ 
Dunham Jackson: ‘‘On approximation by trig- 
onometric sums and polynomials. ’’ 
J. E. Hodgson: ‘‘Orthocentrie properties of the 
plane directed n-line.’’ 
The date of the next regular meeting of the 
society falls on April 27. The Chicago Section 
SCIENCE 
595 
and the San Francisco Section will both meet on 
April 6. ¥F. N. Couz, 
Secretary 
THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY 
NEW YORK SECTION 
Atv the meeting held at Rumford Hall on March 
8 the following sectional officers were elected to 
take office at the close of the present session in 
June: Chairman, Arthur B. Lamb; Vice-chairman, 
David Wesson; Secretary-Treasurer, C. M. Joyce; 
Hawecutive Committee, A. C. Langmuir, G. A. 
Hulett, Allen Rogers and T. L. Briggs. 
The Wm. H. Nichols medal (for the session of 
1910-11) was awarded to Professor Charles James, 
of New Hampshire College, for his work on the 
rare earths. 
Dr. W. Gilman Thompson read a paper on 
‘“Occupational Poisoning in Chemical Trades.’’ 
This paper awakened considerable interest and 
discussion, the meeting favoring further investiga- 
tion of the subject and appointing a committee for 
this purpose. 
Dr. A. M. Comey read a paper on ‘‘ The Testing 
of High Explosives,’’ illustrated by slides, and 
Mr. A, E. Marshall spoke on ‘‘Silica Ware: Its 
Manufacture, Properties and Uses.’’ 
C. M. Joycz, 
Secretary 
THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
SECTION OF BIOLOGY 
AT the regular meeting of the Section of Biol- 
ogy, held at the American Museum of Natural 
History, December 11, 1911, Chairman Frederic A. 
Lueas presiding, Professor Henry E. Crampton 
gave a lecture, illustrated with lantern slides, on 
his recent explorations in Guiana and Brazil. Dr. 
W. K. Gregory concluded his communication on 
the ‘‘Origin of Paired Limbs,’’ reviewing the 
rival claims of the Crossopterygii and Dipnoi for 
the ancestry of the Amphibia and reinterpreting 
the elements of the pectoral limb of the Upper 
Devonian Rhizodont genus Sauripteris. 
At the regular monthly meeting of the section 
held at the American Museum of Natural History, 
January 15, 1912, the following papers were read: 
‘Phylogeny and Ontogeny of the Horns of Mam- 
mals: HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN. 
The recent discovery of the modes of origin of 
the horns in the titanotheres, a perissodactyl group 
remotely related to horses, tapirs and rhinoceroses, 
permits of a comparison of phylogenesis with the 
ontogenesis of the horns in bovine mammals, The 
