474 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIII. No. 1109 



E. W. Brown: "Note on the problem of three 

 bodies. ' ' 



H. Bateman: "A certain system of linear par- 

 tial differential equations." 



H. Bateman : "On multiple electromagnetic 

 fields." 



A. E. Schweitzer: "On a new representation of 

 a finite group." 



A. R. Schweitzer: "Definition of new categories 

 of functional equations. ' ' 



E. B. Wilson : ' ' Critical speeds for flat disks in 

 a normal wind theory. ' ' 



E. B. Wilson: "A mathematical table that con- 

 tains chiefly zeros. ' ' 



E. B. Wilson: "Changing surface to volume 

 integrals. ' ' 



T. H. Gronwall: "Elastic stresses in an infinite 

 solid with a spherical cavity." 



T. H. Gronwall: "On the influence of key ways 

 on a stress distribution in cylindrical shafts. ' ' 



0. E. Glenn: "The formal modular invariant 

 theory of binary quantics. " 



O. E. Glenn : ' ' The concomitant system of a 

 conic and a bilinear connex. " 



P. R. Eider: "Trigonometric functions for ex- 

 tremal triangles. ' ' 



H. tS. Vandiver: "Symmetric functions of sys- 

 tems of elements in a finite algebra and their con- 

 nection with Eermat's quotient and Bernoulli's 

 numbers (second paper)." 



S. A. Joffe: "Calculation of eulerian numbers 

 from central differences of zero." 



The next meeting of the society will be held at 

 Columbia University on April 29. The Chicago 

 Section will meet at the University of Chicago on 

 April 21-22. The summer meeting of the society 

 will be held this year at Harvard University early 

 in September. At the eighth colloquium of the so- 

 ciety, held in connection with the summer meeting, 

 courses of lectures will be given by Professors G. 

 C. Evans, of Rice Institute, on ' ' Topics from the 

 theory and applications of funetionals, including 

 integral equations," and by Professor Oswald 

 Veblen, of Princeton University, on "Analysis 

 situs." P. N. Cole, 



Secretary 



THE BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON 

 The 551st regular meeting of the society was 

 held in the Assembly Hall of the Cosmos Club, 

 Saturday, February 26, 1916, called to order at 8 

 P.M. by President Hay. Fifty persons were- pres- 

 ent. 



The first paper on the program was by D. E. 

 Lantz, "An Early Seventeenth Century Mammalo- 

 gist. ' ' This was a review of Edward Topsell 's 

 ' ' History of Foure-f ooted Beastes, ' ' published in 

 London in 1607. Topsell was born about 1538 and 

 at the completion of this, the first general work on 

 mammals published in the English language, was 

 chaplain of the church of St. Botolph, Aldergate, 

 under Richard Neile, Dean of Westminster, to 

 whom the book is dedicated. The work, including 

 illustrations, is largely translated from Conrad 

 Gesner's "Historia Animalium, " published in 

 1551 ; but the author quotes also from over 250 

 other writers, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, German, Ital- 

 ian and French authorities, and including 76 med- 

 ical treatises. The speaker gave many curious ex- 

 tracts from Topsell illustrating them with lantern 

 pictures of the animals under discussion, taken 

 from the old wood cuts in the book. The pictures 

 included the antelope, an ape monster, the Ameri- 

 can sloth, the beaver, various kinds of hyenas, the 

 unicorn, the riverhorse and the Su, an untamable 

 and ferocious animal that has been identified with 

 the American opossum. 



The second and last paper on the program was 

 by J. W. Gidley, "A Talk on the Extinct Animal 

 Life of North America." Mr. Gidley defined the 

 terms fossil, petrifaction, explained how fossils 

 were formed under various conditions and how they 

 are discovered by the collector. He discussed the 

 evolution of certain animals as shown by their 

 fossil remains as particularly exemplified by horses, 

 elephants and dinosaurs. He emphasized in espe- 

 cial the unfortunate tendency on the part of pale- 

 ontologists to try to see in fossil remains ancestral 

 forms of later fossils or of existing animals. The 

 speaker thought that many fossils represented 

 highly specialized types of their kind, some extinct 

 animals being more highly specialized than their 

 present-day representatives, in fact in many cases 

 their extreme specialization has led to their extinc- 

 tion. In a general way fossil forms represent the 

 evolution of certain .groups .but the immediate 

 connecting forms are for the most part lacking. 

 Mr. Gidley 's communication was profusely illus- 

 trated with lantern views of fossil-bearing locali- 

 ties, of fossils, and of certain artists ' restorations 

 of fossils. Mr. Gidley 's communication was dis- 

 cussed by Dr. L. O. Howard. 



M. W. Lton, Je., 

 Recording Secretary 



