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SCIENCE 



IN. S. Vol. XXV. No. 647 



philological and historical, those for the 

 rest of Friday botanical, chemical and en- 

 gineering. Saturday morning was devoted 

 largely to geology, and Saturday afternoon 

 to astronomy, while the papers covering 

 other branches were sandwiched in, as it 

 was found convenient, amid the general 

 broad subjects. It is not possible within 

 the scope of a general account to do more 

 than say a few words about a limited num- 

 ber of the papers read. 



Among the papers read at the first ses- 

 sion, on Thursday afternoon, was one by 

 Professor W. A. Lamberton on the Greek 

 phrase of the New Testament ordinarily 

 translated 'walking on the sea,' but which 

 Professor Lamberton held, on the basis of 

 an elaborate investigation of the text, 

 should be rendered 'walking at the sea.' 

 The speaker claimed that in the narrative 

 of John, Jesus is not represented as either 

 entering the ship or walking on the sea, but 

 rather on the shore close to the water-edge. 



Mr. Eosengarten's paper on the early 

 French members of the American Philo- 

 sophical Society included an account of 

 the many Frenchmen who at the end of the 

 eighteenth century and in the beginning 

 of the nineteenth century came to this 

 country and became associated in the work 

 of the society. Buffon was the first French- 

 man to be elected a member of the society, 

 in 1768. 



Professor A. Marshall Elliott, of the 

 Johns Hopkins University, presented a 

 paper of great interest on the origin of the 

 word chauvinism, in which, among other 

 things, he pointed out that the attempt to 

 trace this word to a real character rested 

 upon the slenderest foundations. 



Professor Jastrow's paper on the liver 

 as the seat of the soul was an investigation 

 of various views held by the ancients re- 

 garding the organ associated with the soul. 

 The paper showed that while the generally 



prevailing view of antiquity placed the soul 

 in the heart and subsequently in the brain, 

 there were traces of an earlier belief which 

 assigned to the liver the distinction of being 

 the seat of the soul. 



Professor Paul Haupt, of the Johns Hop- 

 kins University, read a paper on Jonah's 

 whale which was devoted to showing the 

 kind of animal that the narrator of the 

 Book of Job had in mind. The important 

 feature of Professor Haupt 's paper was the 

 determination of the fact that whales were 

 known to the ancient Assyrians and are 

 referred to in inscriptions as early as the 

 twelfth century before this era. 



Professor Lewis M. Haupt, of Philadel- 

 phia, presented an important communica- 

 tion on the transportation crisis, in which, 

 after a survey of the earlier methods of 

 transportation in this country, he urged the 

 importance of water highways as the rem- 

 edy for the rapidly increasing difficulties 

 of transportation by railroads. 



Dr. Henry Kraemer gave an outline of a 

 continuation of the interesting studies in 

 producing and modifying the color in 

 plants by treating them with certain chem- 

 icals. 



Dr. Howard Crosby Butler gave an in- 

 teresting account of the Princeton expedi- 

 tion to Syria in 1904^5 which did impor- 

 tant work in surveying, in the study of 

 architecture, and added considerably to our 

 knowledge of the inscriptions and other 

 archeological material in a comparatively 

 little known portion of Syria. 



The paper by Professor Titchener, of 

 Cornell, in collaboration with W. H. Pyle, 

 of Cornell, on the influence of impercep- 

 tible shadows on the judgment of distances 

 demonstrated that the current view that 

 optical illusions in estimating distances by 

 the eye persist even when the lines that 

 produce the illusion are so weak as to be 

 imperceptible is not in accordance with the 



