May 17, 1901.] 
PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 
THE 535th regular meeting was held April 
27th, President Walcott in the chair. 
Mr. I. M. Cassanowicz, of the National 
Museum, presented an interesting paper on 
‘The Funerary Rites of the Ancient Egyptians.’ 
He said the monuments and remains of ancient 
Egypt are chiefly of a sepulchral character. 
The Egyptians believed in a personal existence 
after death. Their conception of the conditions 
and localities of the future existence was vague, 
but these seem to have been patterned after 
the conditions known in Egypt: the dead 
formed a nation who worked for Osiris as for a 
Pharaoh. As the Egyptians could not con- 
ceive of existence apart from a tangible sub- 
stance, a link was needed to connect the Ka, 
the representative of personality, with the 
world of substantial things ; this link was the 
body, and so its preservation was indispensable. 
The various modes of embalming were then 
described, all involving a process of steeping 
in natron for 70 days. The bodies of the poor 
were preserved by soaking in salt and hot 
bitumen, whence the name ‘mummy.’ Then 
followed a minute description of an Egyptian 
funeral, largely derived fiom the Papyrus of 
Ani, a finely illustrated ‘ Book of the Dead’ a 
facsimile of which is in the National Museum. 
The next paper was by Mr. A. L. Baldwin, 
of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, on ‘The 
Measurement of Nine Primary Bases in 1900.’ 
The bases referred to are those required to 
control the triangulation which is now being 
carried both northward and southward from 
the great transcontinental belt of triangulation 
in latitude 39°, and will eventually give an 
are of the ninety-eighth meridian twenty-three 
degrees long in the United States. On this 
triangulation it was decided to measure the 
bases with considerable rapidity while keeping 
the accuracy fully up to the requirements of 
the triangulation. Five sets of base apparatus, 
namely, the Himbeck duplex bars and four 
tapes, were used on each base, about one-fifth of 
the measurement being made with each. Hach 
set of apparatus was standardized under the 
field conditions at the first and last base, using 
the iced bar formerly employed on the Holton 
Base as the standard. The paper was a state- 
SCIENCE. 
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ment of the methods of measurements and of 
some of the results obtained in the field, and 
closed with a good series of twenty-six lantern 
slides showing the different forms of apparatus 
in actual use in the field. The greatest differ- 
ence between measures of the same base was 
20 mm. to the kilometer. The nine bases 
were measured by a party of ten officers and 
men in but little more than six months. 
CHARLES K. WEAD, 
Secretary. 
BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 
THE 339th meeting was held on Saturday 
evening, April 20th. Mr. O. F. Cook read a 
paper on ‘The Shading of Coffee,’ in which he 
advanced the belief that there is no basis in 
reason or observed fact for the common idea 
that shade is a general necessity for the coffee 
plant. It was shown that the beneficial effects 
connected with shade arise only from the pro- 
tection afforded against drought, erosion and 
winds, and that in regions not affected by in- 
jurious climatic extremes the planting of shade 
trees is justified from the cultural standpoint 
only by the increased fertility imparted to the 
soil by means of the nitrogen-fixing root tuber- 
cles of leguminous species. This being the 
case, it was thought that leguminous fertilizing 
might be effected by shrubs and herbs yielding 
edible or otherwise useful fruits and requiring 
no more space or care than those yielding no 
direct returns. 
Mr. Charles L. Pollard presented a paper en- 
titled ‘Some Strange Methods of Plant Nam- 
ing,’ giving a brief review of the various 
classes of incorrect generic and specific names, 
and commenting on the practices that have 
been followed in each case. He discussed par- 
ticularly the so-called barbaric names of 
Adanson and Necker ; those falsely constructed 
from classical sources, and those whose mean- 
ings are at variance with actual facts. The 
speaker also discussed the modern tendency to 
carelessness in the publication of scientific 
names, and recommended that botanists give © 
united support to some movement in favor of 
greater exactness in nomenclature. 
Dr. Theodore Gill made some remarks ‘On 
the Mode of Progression and Habits of some 
