1030 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 417. 



Members of the Council, H. P. Talbot, L. P. 

 Kinnicutt, C. L. Parsons. 



Aethur M. Comey, 



Secretary. 



THE NEW ENGLAND ASSOCLiTION OF CHEMISTRY 

 TEACHERS. 



The Association held its fifteenth regular 

 — sixth annual — meeting Saturday, November 

 15, at the Dorchester High School, Boston. 

 The Association holds three regular meetings 

 per year, its membership being drawn from 

 all sections of the United States, but mostly 

 from New England. Visits were made in 

 the forenoon to the New England Gas and 

 Coke Plant and the United States Steel 

 Works at Everett. The principal paper of 

 the afternoon was by Professor Arthur A. 

 Noyes, of the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 

 nology, on ' The Interpretation of the Usual 

 Scheme of Qualitative Analysis Through the 

 Mass Action Law and the Ionic Theory,' ac- 

 companied by experiments. The following 

 officers were elected for the ensuing year; 



President, L. G. Smitli, Roxbury. 



Tice-President, A. S. Perkins, Dorchester. 



Secretary, George A. Co wen, West Roxbury. 



Treasurer, E. F. Plolden, Charlestown. 



Executive Committee, George W. Earle, Somer- 

 ville; Miss Laura P. Patten, Medford; Oliver P. 

 Watts, Waltham. 



COLUMBU. UNn'ERSITY GEOLOGICAL JOURNAL CLUB. 



Decemher 5. — The following papers were 

 reviewed: T. Nelson Dale, 'Bulletin 195 U. 

 S. G. S.,' by Mr. Fred H. Moffit. Mr. Moffit 

 has been Professor Dale's assistant for the 

 past five years and gave much additional in- 

 formation concerning Vermont geology with 

 some interesting problems of which this Bul- 

 letin deals. Eudolf Dekeskamp, on the 'JDis- 

 tribution of Barium in Rocks and Mineral 

 Springs as Bearing Especially upon the 

 Theory of Lateral Secretion' (Zeitschrifi fiir 

 PraMlsche Geologie, April, 1902), by Pro- 

 fessor J. F. Kemp. H. W. Shijier. 



BOSTON SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



The fij-st meeting of the season was held 

 on November 5, 1902. Dr. T. A. Jaggar, Jr., 

 spoke on the ' Possibility of Volcano-Proof 



Construction.' During the past summer the 

 speaker had investigated the destructive work 

 of Mt. Pelee in the Antilles and described 

 the eruptions there as of a common type in 

 which there are tremendous explosions of 

 steam, hot dust, and stones, but with no good 

 evidence of lava flows. The loss of life is 

 chiefly by the intense heat, by falling of solid 

 bodies, such as stones, by blasts of wind, and 

 by sufi^ocation from causes not clearly defined, 

 but perhaps in some cases by gases. The few 

 survivors of the explosions on Martinique and 

 St. Vincent were in each case sheltered in 

 very tightly constructed rooms which admitted 

 but little outside air, and were protected in 

 some measure by large walls of masonry on 

 the side towards the volcano. A number of 

 • lantern slides were shown illustrating the ef- 

 fects of the explosions. 



The second paper was by Dr. W. E. Castle, 

 on ' Mendel's Principles of Heredity.' Men- 

 del's work on hybridization was performed 

 about fifty years ago, but until recently his 

 discoveries have gone almost unnoticed. 

 Among the more important of Mendel's dis- 

 coveries are: (1) The law of dominance, when, 

 for example, the offspring of two parents dif- 

 fering in respect of one character, all resemble 

 one parent, and possess, therefore, the domi- 

 nant character, that of the other parent being 

 latent or recessive. (2) In place of simple 

 dominance, there may be manifest in the im- 

 mediate hybrid offspring an intensification of 

 character, or a condition intermediate between 

 the two parents, or the offspring may have a 

 peculiar character of their own. (3) A segre- 

 gation of characters united in the hybrid 

 takes place in their offspring, so that a certain 

 per cent, of these offspring possess the domi- 

 nant character alone, a certain per cent, the 

 recessive character alone, while a certain per 

 cent, are again hybrid in nature. 



At the meeting of November 19, 1902, Mr. 

 William Lyman Underwood spoke on ' Bird 

 Photography.' A large number of lantern 

 slides of New England birds was shown, most 

 of which were obtained after much pains- 

 taking work in northern Maine. Mr. Under- 

 wood's observations showed that, in the case 

 of the chickadee and the yellow-bellied sap- 



