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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXI. No. 797 



the feather of a btizzard or owl. Mr. J. N. B. 

 Hewitt pointed out that among the Iroquois edu- 

 cation does not stop with childhood. The adults 

 are trained in the knowledge of the tribal laws 

 and customs and in what may be called inter- 

 tribal law and diplomacy, such as the treaties 

 and pacts entered by the tribe with other tribes, 

 as also in the elaborate ritual connected with 

 certain tribal events, such as the installation of 

 new chiefs. Dr. J. W. Fewkes dwelt on education 

 among the Hopi Indians. 



I. M. Casanowicz, 



THE AMEBICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY 

 EHODE ISLAND SECTION 



The regular meeting of the section was held 

 February 24, 1910, at the University Club, pre- 

 ceded by the usual informal dinner. 



Mr. C. E. Swett, of Providence, E. I., presented 

 the paper for the evening on the subject " Field 

 Notes from the Natural History of Silica." Mr. 

 Swett first outlined the source and mode of forma- 

 tion of rocks in general and then took up the 

 strictly silica rooks such as quartz, flint, etc. 

 Finally he described the silica rocks containing 

 metals, telling the chemical processes leading up 

 to their formation, and showed a large number of 

 specimens taken from various mines visited by 

 him during the summer of 1909. 



Albert W. Ciatlin, 



Pbovidence, E. I. 



THE AMEBICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETT 

 NOETHEASTEEN SECTION 



The ninety-seventh regular meeting of the sec- 

 tion was held at the Massachusetts Institute of 

 Technology, Boston, on March 4. 



Dr. Daniel F. Comstock, of the Massachusetts 

 Institute of Technology, in an address on " The 

 Present Conception as to the Constitution of 

 Matter," briefly outlined the recent advances in 

 the field of atomic and subatomic chemistry and 

 physics, describing some of the brilliant experi- 

 mental work that has marked these developments. 

 There is a reasonable basis for believing that the 

 atom has a real existence and is something more 

 than a helpful fancy and also that the atom itself 

 is a very complex structure. 



Mr. M. C. Whitaker, of the Welsbach Co., 

 Gloucester, N. J., described the monazite sand 

 deposits of Carolina and Brazil, the methods of 



monazite mining and purification, and the prepa- 

 ration therefrom of the rare earths, with par- 

 ticular reference to the nitrates of thorium and 

 cerium. The manufacture of gas mantles was de- 

 scribed in some detail and there was indicated 

 the probable lines along which improvements in 

 mantles are likely to occur. 



F. E. Gallaghee 



THE AMEBICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 



At the meeting of the society on March 18, the 

 following paper was read by Dr. Jay F. Scham- 

 berg, of Philadelphia : " On Vaccination and on 

 the Ravages of Smallpox among Eoyal Families." 

 The speaker sketched the incidents of the dis- 

 covery of vaccination by Jenner in 1798 and re- 

 ferred to the great importance of this discovery 

 to the world. In the seventeenth and eighteenth 

 centuries smallpox was an ever-present and death- 

 dealing scourge, causing, it is estimated, 400,000 

 deaths a year in Europe. The visitations of this 

 disease were severe in many royal families, par- 

 ticularly the Bourbons, the Hapsburgs, the 

 Stuarts and the House of Orange. Since the 

 discovery of vaccination, royalty appears to have 

 been exempt from smallpox. Had vaccination 

 been discovered a century earlier, the destinies 

 of certain European countries would doubtless 

 have been altered. 



The address of April 1 before the society was 

 delivered by David Fairchild, agricultural ex- 

 plorer in charge of foreign seed and plant intro- 

 duction, U. S. Department of Agriculture, on "A 

 New World for Exploration." With the origin of 

 the term agricultural explorer it was recognized 

 by the department that there is in the study of the 

 botanical relatives of our cultivated plants a new 

 world to explore. The botanical explorations of 

 the past have been mainly for the purpose of 

 classifying in a general way all the plant species 

 of the world. Now that the possibilities of plant 

 breeding are more fully recognized, the great im- 

 portance of getting together the relatives of our 

 cultivated crop plants has become very apparent. 

 The importance was emphasized by the speaker of 

 getting, before it is too late, the strains or races 

 of well-recognized economic species which have 

 been selected for centuries by cultivation in iso- 

 lated mountain valleys, desert oases and oceanic 

 islands. The rapid spread of railways and ocean 

 travel and its accompanying seed exchange 

 threaten to soon swamp these varieties, many of 

 which may be of the greatest value to civilization. 



