DECEMBER 3, 1897. ] 
A paper by Dr. Weir Mitchell and Alonzo 
H. Stewart, on the ‘Action of Venom of 
Crotalus Adamanteus Upon the Blood,’ was 
read by Dr. Bowditch. 
On Thursday there were further contri- 
butions by Professors Verrill and Marsh. 
Professor Cross, on invitation of the Coun- 
cil, presented a paper on the ‘ Wave Siren,’ 
and 8. C. Chandler discussed the agreement 
of ‘The Theory of the Motion of the Pole 
with Recent Observations.’ There was also 
a paper by Major Powell, ‘An Hypothesis 
to Account for Movements in the Crust of 
the Harth,’ and Professor Emmons gave an 
account of the International Congress of 
Geologists at St. Petersburg. 
As might well be expected, the social fea- 
tures of a meeting of the Academy were 
not lacking. A number of academicians 
availed themselves of the opportunity to 
hear the last of the course of lectures on 
‘Tides’ by Professor George Darwin, at the 
Lowell Institute, the final lecture of the 
course being on Tuesday evening. There 
was unusual interest in the reception on 
that evening, at the home of Mrs. Professor 
W. B. Rogers, whose husband was for sev- 
eral years and at the time of his death the 
President of the Academy. Similar cour- 
tesies were extended to members on Wed- 
nesday and Thursday afternoons, and on 
Wednesday evening Professor Trowbridge 
described and exhibited his new 10,000-cell 
storage battery and high-voltage apparatus. 
AMERICAN SOCIETY OF MECHANICAL ENGI- 
NEERS. 
TuHE 18th annual and 36th regular meet- 
ing of the American Society of Mechanical 
Engineers was held in New York, beginning 
on November30th. This Society, now seven- 
teen years old, numbers nearly two thous- 
and members, including substantially all 
mechanical engineers of the United States. 
Its transactions are always rich in valuable 
SCIENCE. 
821 
technical facts and data and are usually so 
extensive as to fill a large annual volume. 
The principal papers of the present ses- 
sion were the following: 
Mr. F. W. Dean summarizes the progress 
of improvement in reducing the ‘ Cost of 
Steam Power’ from 1870 to 1897; showing 
that the gain has been between thirty and 
forty per cent. He attributes this saving 
to the following: 87% to higher steam- 
pressure and ratios of expansion, multiple- 
cylinder engines, steam jacketing and dry- 
ing or superheating the steam; 5% to the 
use of vertical engines; 7% to improved 
boilers; 7% to economizers heating the 
feed water ; 2% to improved grates. The 
weight of steam used per horse-power per 
hour has fallen from 20 to 12.5 pounds, as 
minima for the dates given. He finds the 
compound engine the usual and on the 
whole most successful form of engine and 
gives valuable data relating to its efficiency 
and the costs of power where it is em- 
ployed. 
Professor Carpenter presents the results 
of ‘ Tests of Centrifugal Pumps’ and ‘ Cali- 
bration of a Weir’ at Chicago, where the 
unique opportunity was presented of mak- 
ing such determinations on an exceptionally 
large scale, and of checking the standard 
formulas for discharge perhaps more accu- 
rately than ever before on anything ap- 
proaching so large ascale. The conclusion 
is reached that the Weisbach formula is 
more exact than the Francis, under such 
circumstances, and that it is best employed 
without allowing for ‘ end-contraction.’ The 
great centrifugal pumps, of usual form, 
gave efficiencies rising to above 60 per cent. 
Dr. Thurston, in conjunction with Mr. 
Brinsmade, read a paper on ‘Multiple 
Cylinder Engines and Effects of Variation 
of Loads,’ in which the experimental in- 
vestigation of the relative efficiencies at 
various loads was determined for the 
standard ‘compound’ and ‘triple expan- 
