June 9, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



909 



desire, and thou shalt rule over him. ' ' The story 

 of the fall of man and the story of Cain and Abel 

 were, it may be supposed, written in parallel 

 columns. 



The author of the ancient protest against the 

 curse on Eve (who may have been a woman or a 

 man under the influence of a woman, a species of 

 genus Homo which is common) wrote this "suf- 

 f ragettic ' ' gloss on the space between the two 

 columns. Afterwards it crept into the text of the 

 column containing the story of Cain and Abel. 

 The introductory verse connecting Cain and Abel 

 and Adam and Eve is a subsequent addition. The 

 name Cain is explained there (Genesis 4:1) as 

 being connected with the verb ' ' canah, ' ' to pro- 

 duce. When Eve bare Cain she said, "I have 

 produced a man as well as the Lord. Just as the 

 Lord formed me from the rib He took from Adam, 

 so I have produced now a new human being." 



Some people think that when the Lord created 

 Eve he took not only a rib from Adam, but his 

 backbone. Most of us have all our ribs. If man 

 eats his bread in the sweat of his face tiU he 

 returneth unto the ground, and if woman bring 

 forth children born to suffer, it is due to the 

 forbidden fruit. Schiller says the fabric of the 

 world is held together by hunger and love. 

 Theories of Totemism: E. Washburn Hopkins, 



Yale University. 



He considered first the definition of totemism 

 and the necessity of understanding the different 

 religious systems which go by the name of totem- 

 ism. He showed that totemism must be disen- 

 tangled from various accretions which have grown 

 up with it before it is possible to discuss the 

 essence of true totemism. When this is done, 

 much that has affected and even produced some 

 of the theories falls away and at the end a com- 

 paratively simple belief is revealed which has been 

 built up into various sorts of totemism, so that it 

 is unnecessary -^to assume a graded and uniform 

 growth in every kind of totemism. Apparently 

 later stages may come comparatively early. The 

 latest theory of Frazer was examined and com- 

 pared with that of Lang and that of Wundt. 

 Besides this analysis and critique of older theories 

 a new contribution to the theory of utility was 

 made by the presentation for the first time of 

 matter drawn from Sanskrit texts in which prac- 

 tically the same view is represented as that held 

 by the ancient troglodytes. Apart from some 

 variations the most common direct cause of totem- 

 ism is economic rather than religious and then 

 blends with other religious factors, but is not so 



fundamentally, though there are forms of totem- 

 ism which are based on religious conceptions and 

 helping to its spiritualistic development. 



The New History: J. H. Eobinson, of Columbia 



University. ( Introduced by Professor Cheyney. ) 

 Eggettes: a Conservation of Fuel: E. P. Field, 



of Philadelphia. 



This paper dealt briefly with the general sub- 

 ject of the utilization of slack coal by manufac- 

 turing it into small briquettes, which are called 

 eggettes, and showed that a binder which does 

 not contain pitch or any kindred material is 

 preferable for household use, and that by actual 

 test the eggettes under consideration are cheaper 

 than either anthracite or bituminous coal in the 

 regular sizes, crushed coke, wood, oU or gas. 

 There was then given a brief description with 

 lantern slides of the machinery used to manufac- 

 ture these eggettes, and a few statistical tables. 



On Saturday afternoon besides the symposium 

 and the papers in connection with it already men- 

 tioned a portrait of Thomas Hopkinson, first 

 president of the American Philosophical Society, 

 was presented by Leslie W. Miller, principal of 

 the School of Industrial Art, Philadelphia; also 

 an obituary notice of Professor Jakob H. van't 

 Hoff, by Harry C. Jones, of Johns Hopkins Uni- 

 versity. 



At the annual banquet on Saturday evening 

 about one hundred members and guests were 

 present, the president. Dr. Keen, presiding. 

 Toasts were responded to as follows : ' ' The Mem- 

 ory of Franklin," by President Schurman, of 

 Cornell; "Our Universities," by Count von Bern- 

 storff and President Hadley, of Yale; "Our Sis- 

 ter Societies," by Professor W. M. Davis and 

 Sir John Murray; "The American Philosophical 

 Society," by Professor E. C. Pickering. 



Thus ended one of the most successful meetings 

 in the history of the society. 



Arthue W. Goodspeed, 



Secretary 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES 



THE WASHINGTON ACADEMY Or SCIENCES 



The seventy-second meeting of the Washington 

 Academy of Sciences, a joint meeting with the 

 Washington Society of Engineers, was held in the 

 salon of the steamer Southland the evening of 

 April 28, 1911, while en route from Washington 

 to Norfolk, Va., President F. W. Clarke, of the 

 academy, presided. 



A symposium on the Dismal Swamp had been 



