966 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XII. No. 312. 



and the latter with France. The second inva- 

 sion, the BO-called 'Great Siberian Migration,' 

 took place after the deposition of the conti- 

 nental boulder day in Central Europe, and the 

 retreat of the glaciers, reaching only England, 

 as Ireland and Norway had become detached 

 by that time. A branch of this invasion reached 

 Scandinavia from the east. The third invasion 

 is still in progress, being most marked and most 

 easily demonstrated along the shores of the 

 Arctic Ocean, entering Scandinavia from the 

 northeast over Finland and northern Russia, a 

 comparatively recent connection between Nor- 

 way and Siberia. The immigration of a number 

 of birds and mammals into Scandinavia by this 

 route was treated in detail, from both a his- 

 torical and a distributional point of view. 



Erwin F. Scaith spoke of ' Sugar Beets In 

 New York and Michigan,' describing the 

 methods of beet cultivation and the various 

 steps in the process of making beet sugar. As 

 many as three hundred acres of beets were 

 raised on one farm, and the daily output of 

 one of the smaller factories was five tons. 

 In theory, the speaker stated, the beet crop 

 was one of the best possible for the land, since 

 by utilizing the waste products of the sugar 

 factory, the potash taken from the soil could be 

 returned to it, but unfortunately in practice this 

 was not done and the waste products, instead 

 of being used, were in Michigan dumped into 

 the sti-eams. Beet diseases, it was said, were 

 already a serious problem, causing serious losses 

 to the farmer, and other diseases would doubt- 

 less be introduced from Germanj', whence came 

 most of the seed used in this country. 



F. A. Lucas. 



THE ROYAL SOCIETY. 

 The report of the Council states according 

 tot he London Times that during the past year 

 its time and attention had been largely occu- 

 pied by business^ connected with matters of 



* ' The Principles of Stratigraphic Geology, ' by J. 

 E. Marr, 1898, p. 98. 



tSee Bun. Amer. Paleont., No. 13, November, 1900. 

 Ithaca. 26 pp., 5 pi. Describes twenty new species 

 of calciferous Gastropoda, Brachiopodaand Trilobites; 

 also one new genus of Trilobita, all from the Mohawk 

 Valley, usually considered unfossiliferous. 



national and international scientific interest, in 

 which her Majesty's Government had either 

 directly sought the advice and assistance of 

 the Society, or had itself given assistance 

 and financial support to undertakings pro- 

 moted by the Society in the interests of sci- 

 ence. The operations of tlie National Phys- 

 ical Laboratory had been carried on in the 

 buildings of the Kew Observatory. The control 

 of the work carried on by the Kew Committee 

 of the Royal Society was taken over by the 

 executive committee from January 1st, and the 

 property of that committee was made over to 

 the Royal Society from that date. The com- 

 mittee, which was incorporated as a public 

 company, has since been dissolved. The work 

 at Kew Observatory had been continued in all 

 its branches. After considerable discussion, 

 plans for a physics building, at an estimated 

 cost of £6,000, and an engineering laboratory, 

 at an estimated cost of £4,000, were approved 

 by the executive committee and submitted to 

 the general board. Unfortunately, all these 

 plans must be discarded, and very grave loss 

 of time had been caused by the unexpected op- 

 position to the erection qf the laboratory in the 

 Old Deer-park. Her Majesty's Treasury had 

 now informed the Council that her Majesty 

 was willing to assign the lease of Bushey- 

 house and the surrounding ground, thirty 

 acres in extent, for the purpose of the Na- 

 tional Physical Laboratory, and that the Gov- 

 ernment would increase the grant for build- 

 ing by £2,000 in order that the extensive 

 alterations and repairs which would be neces- 

 sary might be carried out. Though the Council 

 regretted the decision of the Government not 

 to erect the laboratory in the Deer-park, they 

 recognized with gratitude that her Majesty had 

 been graciously pleased to place at the disposal 

 of the Society a site in which the work of the 

 laboratory could be carried on, and they had, 

 therefore, accepted the offer made to them by 

 her Majesty's Treasury. The committee had 

 to thank various donors for gifts. Sir Andrew 

 Noble had contributed £1,000 for the purchase 

 of apparatus. Dr. Isaac Roberts had given a 

 spectroscope and two very valuable induction 

 coils. Dr. Common had provided apparatus for 

 determining the magnifying power and testing 



