178 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. III. No. 57. 



Dr. G. Brown Goode will be ijublished in this 

 journal. 



At this meeting the Joint Committee elected 

 officers for the ensuing year, with the following 

 result : 



President — Gardiner G. Hubbard. 



Vice-President — G. Brown Goode. 



Secretary — Joseph Stanley-Brown. 



Treasurer — Perry B. Pierce. 



The Executive Committee elected will con- 

 sist of the above and one member from each of 

 the component societies, as follows: Anthropo- 

 logical, L. F. Ward; Biological, Dr. George M. 

 Sternberg, U. S. A. ; Chemical, Dr. E. A. De 

 Schweinitz ; Entomological, Wm. H. Ashmead; 

 Geological, S. F. Emmons; National Geo- 

 graphic, G. K. Gilbert, and Philosophical, Prof. 

 F. W. Clarke. W. F. Morsell. 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON, 

 JANUARY 4. 



E. D. Pebston read a paper on a new graphic 

 method of reducing stars from mean to apparent 

 places, which gave detailed exposition of a new 

 graphical method of finding the apparent places 

 of stars. The reduction was carried out by 

 having the day numbers plotted on a scale suffi- 

 ciently large to read two decimal places, and 

 then multiplying these graphically by the star 

 numbers which are calculated by construction 

 on the same sheet. The calculation of these 

 last quantities is facilitated in several ways. 

 Two quadrants are drawn, and the right ascen- 

 sion and declination of the star to be reduced 

 being selected, the simple trigonometrical func- 

 tions are immediately read off from the figure. 



For those terms where a product of functions 

 appears, the method enables the operator rto 

 construct the quantity by different processes. 

 That one is chosen which arrives at a resulting 

 line lying at right angles to the day numbers 

 already plotted. This makes their multiplica- 

 tion a very easy matter. In actual practice 

 the construction lines shown on the diagram are 

 of course not drawn. The whole sheet being 

 divided into small squares, the computer is able 

 to project the point visually, and to determine 

 the intersections of the necessary constructions 

 without actually drawing them. 



The method has been principally used for 

 checking the regular computation, and this can 

 be done in less than one-half the time required 

 to make the first reduction. But with a scale 

 sufficiently enlarged there seems to be no reason 

 why the system should not be used with entire 

 success for a complete and separate solution. 



January 18th the following papers were read : 

 Dr. G. Brown Goode, on ' The Principles of 

 Museum Administration ;' Mr. Isaac Winston, 

 on the ' Present form of precise levelling ap- 

 paratus in use by the U. S. Coast and Geodetic 

 Survey;' Mr. G. R. Putnam, on the 'Results 

 of Recent Pendulum Observations. ' 



Beenaed R. Green, 



Secretary. 



CHEMICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON, 83D EEG- 



ULAR MEETING, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 



14, 1895. 



The President, Chas. E. Munroe, in the chair, 

 with thirty-five members present. The follow- 

 ing were elected to membership: H, B. Hodges, 

 Allan Wade Dow, W, W. Skinner and F. B. 

 Bomberger. Dr. Marcus Benjamin read a paper 

 on ' The Smithsonian Institution's Contribu- 

 tions to Chemistry from 1846 to 1896.' He re- 

 ferred to the fact thatSmithson in his time was 

 considered as among the most expert of chem- 

 ists in elegant analysis. This he thought had 

 much to do with the provision made for a 

 chemical laboratory in the original ' programme 

 of organization of the Smithsonian Institution.' 

 He traced the history of the laboratory, men- 

 tioning the chemists who have occupied it, 

 among whom was J. Laurence Smith, The 

 chemical publications of the Institution were 

 reviewed, beginning with that of Dr. Robert 

 Hare 'On the Explosiveness of Nitre,' in 1850, 

 down to that ' On the Density of Oxygen and 

 Hydrogen, and on the Reduction of their 

 Atomic Weights,' by Edward N. Morley, in 

 1895. The lectures by Cooke, Johnson, Hunt 

 and others were mentioned and the grants of 

 funds to Genth, Gibbs and Morley for chemical 

 research were described. 



The work of Booth as shown in his ' Report 

 of Recent Instruments in the Chemical Arts;' 

 of Clarke in his ' Constants of Nature,' and of 

 Bolton in his 'Bibliography of Chemistry,' as 



