March 15, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



421 



G. A. Buss : ' Tlie construction of a field of 

 extremals about a given point.' 



R. G. D. Richardson: 'Differentiation and in- 

 tegration of definite integrals.' 



E. R. Hedkick : ' On a final form of tlie theorem 

 of uniform continuity.' 



R. D. Carmichael: 'On the classification of 

 quartic curves possessing fourfold symmetry with 

 respect to a point.' 



The San Francisco Section met on the same 

 day at Stanford Univei-sity. The Chicago 

 Section will meet at the University of Chicago 

 on Saturday, March 30. At the next meeting 

 of the society, on Saturday, April 27, Pro- 

 fessor W. F. Osgood will deliver his presi- 

 dential address, postponed from the annual 

 meeting. The subject of the address is ' The 

 Calculus in Colleges and Technical Schools.' 



F. N. Cole, 

 Secretary 



SOCIETY FOR EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY AND 

 MEDICINE 



The nineteenth meeting of the Society for 

 Experimental Biology and Medicine was held 

 in Schermerhorn Hall, Columbia University, 

 in ISTew York City, on Wednesday evening, 

 December 19, 1906, The president, Simon 

 Flexner, was in the chair. 



Members present. — Auer, Beebe, Burton- 

 Opitz, Calkins, Davenport, Emerson, Ewing, 

 Flexner, Foster, Gies, Hatcher, Lusk, Mandel 

 (A. E.), Meltzer, Meyer, Morgan, ISToguchi, 

 Norris, Sherman, Shaffer, Torrey, Wolf, Tatsu. 



Members elected. — Alexis Carrel, Winfield 

 S. Hall, William Ophiils, H. Gideon Wells. 



Abstracts of Original Communications^ 



An Experiment on the Localization Problem 

 in the Egg of Cerebratulus : Naohide Yatsu. 

 The author found that the third cleavage 

 does not always separate the entodermic stuff 

 from the ectodermic, so that the embryo from 

 the animal half sometimes invaginates and 

 sometimes does not. But in shifting the third 

 '■ The abstracts presented in this account of the 

 proceedings have been greatly condensed from ab- 

 stracts prepared by the authors themselves. The 

 latter abstracts of the communications may be 

 found in number two of volume four of the so- 

 ciety's proceedings. 



cleavage plane to the equator by compressing 

 the egg immediately after the first division 

 (in doing this, the second cleavage is sup- 

 pressed until pressure is relieved, the third 

 cleavage of the normal egg appearing next to 

 the first) and in separating the animal half 

 from the vegetative, the former always gave 

 rise to an embryo without gut, anenteron. 

 From this it may be concluded that in the egg 

 of Cerebratulus lacteus, a little before or at 

 the time of the third cleavage, the entodermic 

 basis extends farther above than that of Cere- 

 bratulus marginaius. 



Experiments upon the Total Metabolism of 

 Iron and Calcium in Man: H. C. Sherman. 

 Each of the experiments was of three days 

 duration and the same healthy man served as 

 subject, throughout. On a diet of crackers 

 and milk which furnished 0.0057 gram iron 

 and 2.65 grams calcium oxide (Exp. I.), there 

 was equilibrium with respect to iron, and a 

 storage of calcium. When the diet consisted 

 of crackers and egg-white with 0.0065 gram 

 iron and 0.14 gram lime (Exp. II.), or of 

 crackers alone with 0.0071 gram iron and 0.13 

 gram lime (Exp. III.) there were losses of 

 both iron and calcium. These losses occurred 

 through the intestine, but were evidently not 

 due to intestinal putrefaction, since the ratio 

 of sulphur in ethereal to that in simple sul- 

 ■ phates in the urine was determined in Exp. 

 III. and found to be as 1 : 25. The results 

 appear to confirm the suggestion of Von 

 Wendt that a deficiency of calcium in the diet 

 may lead to a loss of iron as well as of cal- 

 cium from the body. There was a slight 

 tendency toward diarrhoea in each of the peri- 

 ods in which loss of iron and calcium oc- 

 curred. The iron requirement evidently va- 

 ried greatly, the average daily output for three 

 experiments being 5.5, 8.7 and 12.6 milligrams, 

 respectively. The lime requirement was found 

 in further experiments (IV. and V.) to be 

 about 0.75 gram of calcium oxide per day. 



The Cause of the Treppe: Frederic S. Lee. 



The treppe is usually ascribed to increased 

 irritability caused by activity. The cause of 

 the increased irritability has remained obscure. 

 In studying the depressing action on muscle 



