JANUARY 4, 1901.] 
ted, the speaker then describing the habits of 
the animal as observed by him during a recent 
visit to the Triangles, in the Gulf of Campeche, 
to which the seal now appears to be restricted. 
They were sluggish and stupid, making practi- 
cally no defense when attacked, and very easy 
to approach. While on shore they commonly 
laid on their backs, basking in the sun for 
hours, although the heat was so intense that 
iron exposed to the sun became too hot to 
handle with comfort, and dead seals soon had 
the epidermis so heated that the hair slipped 
off. Owing to the killing of these seals for oil, 
sold for lubricating purposes, their numbers had 
been greatly reduced, it being estimated that 
under one hundred were now living so that the 
extinction of the species would probably soon 
take place. 
F, A. Lucas. 
TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB. 
THE scientific program on November 28th 
consisted of a paper, soon to be printed, by Mr. 
Frederick H. Blodgett, on ‘The Seed and Seed- 
ling of Lilium tenuifoliuwm Fisch,’ in which the 
seed characters were presented in detail, and 
with comparisons with those of Hrythronium. 
Interesting differences were found in the size 
of the Lilium seeds about 93 per cent. of 
which germinated the small seeds as quickly 
as the larger, though with less vigorous subse- 
quent growth. 
On Tuesday afternoon, December 11th, th® 
Club met at the Botanical Garden at Bronx 
Park. The program included a brief address 
by Professor Charles E. Bessey, a visit to the 
Garden conservatories with explanations by Dr. 
Britton, and the exhibition by Miss Anna M. 
Vail of valuable books recently added to the Gar- 
den library. Mr. R. M. Harper exhibited a very 
interesting series of specimens and photographs 
of plants from Georgia, and gave notes on their 
habitat and distribution. Dr. J. K. Small de- 
scribed a series of tree and shrub specimens 
from the south, with critical notes. Dr. D. T. 
MacDougal presented notes on the bulbils of 
Lysimachia terrestris. These bulbils are formed 
during the latter part of the season, in the 
axils of many leaves, and are morphologically 
branches. On completing their growth they 
SCIENCE. 
27 
pass into rhizomes. 
and desiccation. 
Another paper was by Dr. M. A. Howe, ‘ Re- 
marks on rare North American Hepatice.’ The 
first hepatic discussed was Riccia Beyrichiana, a 
species which was discovered about seventy 
years ago ‘between Jefferson and Gainesville, 
North America,’ by the German traveller Bey- 
rich, but which has of late been a subject of con- 
siderable doubt, inasmuch as it has not been seen 
since. Now, however, it has apparently been re- 
discovered by Mr. R. M. Harper, who found it 
during the last summer at Athens, Georgia, 
scarcely more than twenty miles from the lo- 
cality where it was evidently first collected. 
Dr. Howe also furnished a brief account of 
a collection of Hepatice made in the Yukon re- 
gion by Mr. R. S. Williams—a collection of 
much interest, inasmuch as it contained one 
species which appears to be entirely new, one 
which has not heretofore been reported from 
this continent, five others new to the Alaskan 
region, and, besides these, two or three which 
have been rarely collected in America. The 
report on Mr. Williams’s Hepatice is soon to be 
published. 
They are killed by freezing 
EDWARD S. BURGEss, 
Secretary. 
THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE OF ST. LOUIS. 
AT the meeting of the Academy of Science of 
St. Louis of December 3, 1900, fifteen persons 
being present, Mr. William H. Roever, of Wash- 
ington University, read a paper on ‘Brilliant 
Points and Loci of Brilliant Points.’ The paper 
gave the analytical conditions which define the 
brilliant point of a surface, the brilliant point of 
a space curve, the brilliant point of a plane 
curve and the brilliant point in space of two 
dimensions, when the source of light is such that 
the incident rays are normal to a given surface 
and the recipient is such that the reflected rays 
are normal to another given surface. Formule 
were given for the important special case in 
which the source and recipient are points. The 
paper also contained a general method for find- 
ing the equation of the locus of the brilliant 
points of a moving or variable surface or curve, 
together with a number of applications. Such 
loci may often be perceived when an illuminated 
