Maech 25, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



479 



G. D. Birkhoff: "A simplified treatment of the 

 regular singular point." 



G. D. Birkhoff: "Some oscillation and com- 

 parison theorems." 



P. F. Smith : " On osculating bands of surface- 

 element loei." 



Eduard Study : " Die natiirlichen Gleichungen 

 der analytischen Curven im euklidischen Raume." 



G. A. Miller: "Addition to Sylow's theorem." 



Peter Field: "On the circuits of a plane curve." 



C. L. Bouton: "Examples of transcendental 

 one-to-one transformations." 



Jacob Westlimd: "On the fundamental number 



of the algebraic number field k ( V'n ) •" 



L. P. Eisenhart : " Surfaces with isothermal 

 representation of their lines of curvature and 

 their transformations (second paper)." 

 Edward Kasner : '' Isothermal nets." 

 Arthur Ranum : " On the principle of duality 

 in spherical geometry." 



0. E. Glenn : " On multiple factors of ternary 

 and quaternary forms: applications to resolution 

 of rational fractions." 



The San Francisco Section of the society met 

 at Stanford University on February 26. The 

 Chicago Section meets at the University of Chi- 

 cago on Friday and Saturday, April 8-9. The 

 next regular meeting of the society will be held 

 at Columbia University on Saturday, April 30. 

 F. N. Com, 

 Secretary 



THE BIOLOGICAL SOCIETT OF WASHINGTOJSI 



The 4C6th regular meeting of the society was 

 held on February 12, 1910, in the main lecture 

 hall of George Washington University, with Vice- 

 president E. W. Nelson in the chair and a large 

 attendance of members. 



Under the heading " Brief Notes," Dr. Barton 

 W. Evermann told of recent experiments in feeding 

 fur-seals in captivity made by Mr. Judson Thurber, 

 boatswain of the Reveniie Cutter Bear. Two 

 starving seal pups were captured on the Pribilof 

 Islands, October 9, 1909, and delivered to the Bear 

 on October 14. They were fed on condensed milk 

 and later on fish, and were successfully conveyed 

 to Seattle, and thence to Washington, where they 

 are now on exhibition at the Fisheries Building, 

 both in excellent health. It is hoped that the 

 practical outcome of this experiment will be the 

 saving of a large number of the young seals on 

 the Pribilofs that are usually lost because of the 

 destruction of the mothers through pelagic sealing. 



The following communications were presented: 

 On Alaskan and Far Northern Mosquitoes: L. 0. 



Howard. 



Dr. Howard spoke briefly on Alaskan and other 

 far-northern mosquitoes, quoting from the pub- 

 lished accounts of arctic explorers and from let- 

 ters received from travelers in Alaska and other 

 sub-polar and polar regions. It appears that in 

 the short arctic summer mosquitoes are excessively 

 numerous and bloodthirsty, although the number 

 of species involved is apparently verj' small. Most 

 of the species from such regions in the collection 

 of the National Museum, on the authority of 

 Mr. F. Knab, belong to the genus .-Tvde.s, a group 

 which winter in the egg state and produce a single 

 generation upon the melting of the snows. The 

 development of the larvse is rapid and almost 

 simultaneous, resulting in a veritable explosion 

 of adult mosquitoes. 



A Collecting Trip to Alaska (illustrated by lan- 

 tern slides) : A. S. Hitchcock. 

 During the summer of 1909, Professor Hitch- 

 cock, systematic agrostologist, U. S. Department 

 of Agriculture, made a trip through interior 

 Alaska for the purpose of studying and collecting 

 the grasses of this region, which is comparatively 

 little known botanically. Starting from Seattle, 

 June 15, he visited Juneau, Sitka and Cordova, 

 from which latter point an excursion was made 

 up the Copper River on the new railroad to Miles 

 Glacier. Returning to Juneau, he went to Skag- 

 way and over the White Pass to White Horse, 

 where he was joined by Mr. R. S. Kellogg, of the 

 Forest Service. Besides short stops at inter- 

 mediate points, he visited Dawson, Rampart, Hot 

 Springs, Fairbanks, Fort Gibbon, St. Michael and 

 Nome, returning to Seattle direct. 



Alaska consists of several well-marked regions. 

 The coast region lies between the coast and the 

 extension of the Cascade range of mountains, 

 which becomes the Alaska Range. This high 

 range includes the high peaks, Mt. St. Elias and 

 Mt. McKinley. The climate of this region, ex- 

 tending from Ketchikan in southeastern Alaska to 

 Cook Inlet, is similar to that of the Puget Sound 

 region. It is characterized by great rainfall (111 

 inches at Sitka; as much as 60 feet of snow in 

 winter at Valdez), equable temperature (it is no 

 colder in winter at Sitka than at Washington), 

 and the prevalence of cloudy and foggy days. The 

 Yukon Basin, which includes a large part of the 

 interior, has, on the contrary, a continental cli- 



