518 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL VI. No. 1195 



The urine of the horned lizard is excreted 

 in the dry form at the same time as the feces, 

 from which it is separated by a constriction of 

 the common mass, the material voided at any 

 one time having roughly the shape of a dumb- 

 hell, one of the enlargements being composed 

 of urine and the other of fecal matter. The 

 following figures for the composition of the 

 urine of Phrynosoma cornutum (specimens ob- 

 tained at Alamogordo, N. M.) have been ob- 

 tained recently in the laboratory of physiolog- 

 ical chemistry of the University of Illinois, 

 the work having been undertaken at the sug- 

 gestion and under the direction of Dr. H. B. 

 Lewis. 



Cuustltuents Mg. per Gm. of Dry Urine 



Total nitrogen 260 



Urea -|- ammonia nitrogen . . 1.4 



Ammonia nitrogen 1.4 



Uric acid 765 



Creatinine Trace 



Ash 87.5 



Phosphorus as PoOj 3.5 



It will be noticed from the above figures that 

 uric acid accounts for practically the total 

 amount of nitrogen present, and that there is 

 no urea. The small amount of ammonia is 

 probably present as ammonium urate. The ash 

 present is mostly composed of foreign mate- 

 rials (sand grdins, etc.) inseparable from the 

 urinary mass and therefore weighed and 

 analyzed with it. A. O. Weese 



The University op Illinois 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES 



AMERICAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY 



The one hundred and ninety-third regular meet- 

 ing of the American Mathematical Society was held 

 at Columbia University on Saturday, October 27. 

 The attendance at the morning and afternoon ses- 

 sions included thirty-five members. Professor Os- 

 wald Veblen occupied the chair, being relieved by 

 Professor L. P. Eisenhart. The council an- 

 nounced the election of the following persona to 

 membership in the society: Dr. J. V. DePorte, 

 State College, Albany, N. Y.; Mr. J. W. Lasley, 

 Jr., University of North Carolina; Mr. Vincente 

 MiUs, Philippine Bureau of Lands; Professor B. 

 M. Woods, University of California. Five appli- 

 cations for membership were received. 



A committee was appointed to audit the ac- 

 counts of the treasurer for the current year. A list 

 of nominations for officers and other members of 

 the council was prepared and ordered printed on 

 the official ballot for the annual election at the 

 December meeting. The Secretary was directed to 

 procure insurance to the amount of $10,000 on the 

 library of the society, which is deposited in the 

 Columbia Library. 



The following papers were read at this meeting: 



E. D. Carmichael: "Elementary inequalities for 

 the roots of an algebraic equation." 



Louise D. Cummings: "The two-columua indices 

 for triad systems on fifteen elements. ' ' 



G. A. Pfeiffer: "On the continuous mapping of 

 regions bounded by simple closed curves." 



J. P. Eitt: "On the differentiability of asymp- 

 totic series." 



W. B. Fite: "Concerning the zeros of the solu- 

 tions of certain linear differential equations." 



J. E. Eowe: "Hexagons related to any plane 

 cubic curve. ' ' 



G. D. Birkhoff: "On a theorem concerning 

 closed normalized orthogonal sets of functions 

 with an application to Sturm-Liouville series." 



Edward Kasner : ' ' Systems of circles related to 

 the theory of heat." 



0. E. Glenn : ' ' Systems of invariants and co- 

 variants of Einstein's theory of relativity." 



J. K. Whittemore : ' ' Theorems on ruled sur- 

 faces. ' ' 



E. L. Moore: "On certain systems of equally 

 continuous curves. ' ' 



E. L. Moore: "Continua that have no continua 

 of condensation." 



J. E. Kline: "Necessary and sufficient condi- 

 tions, in terms of order, that it be possible to pass 

 a simple continuous are through a plane point 

 set. ' ' 



Oswald Veblen: "On the deformation of n- 

 cells. ' ' 



Oswald Veblen: "Deformations within an »-di- 

 mensional sphere." 



The San Francisco Section met at the Univer- 

 sity of California on October 27. The Southwest- 

 ern Section will meet at the University of Okla- 

 homa on December 1. The Chicago Section will 

 meet with the Mathematical Asssociation of Amer- 

 ica at the University of Chicago on December 28- 

 29. The annual meeting of the society will be held 

 at Columbia University on December 27-28. 



F. N. Cole, 

 Secretary 



