194 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. V. No. 109. 



is inoculated with typhoid bacilli from a pure 

 culture. The growth of the bacilli, instead of 

 taking place in a diffuse manner throughout 

 the fluid, is in the form of clumps, which fall to 

 the bottom of the tube. In the simplest form 

 the reaction may be obtained from a drop of 

 blood taken from the finger tip or lobule of the 

 ear and which has been allowed to dry upon a 

 glass slide. The dried blood is moistened with a 

 drop or two of water in order to cause a solution 

 of the serum, and a small amount of this solution 

 is added to a drop of a living culture of the 

 typhoid bacillus. If this mixture is now ob- 

 served under the microscope the bacilli are 

 seen to quickly lose their motility, and in a short 

 while (within 30 minutes) to run together to 

 form clumps, or, as these have been called, 'ag- 

 glutinates.' This reaction has been obtained as 

 early as the third or fourth day of the disease 

 and as late as the ninetieth, and promises to 

 be fairly constant. It may persist for a con- 

 siderable period — limit unknown — after recov" 

 ery ; for the blood of persons still shows the 

 reaction two years after the disease. As far as 

 we are informed at present the reaction is to be 

 relied upon as diagnostic. It has grown out of 

 the Pfeiffer cholera reaction ; but it differs from 

 this in dispensing with an animal for the ex- 

 periment, and also because in it the bacteria do 

 do not proceed to disintegration but merely to 

 agglutination. 



The papers presented and read by title were : 



' On Singularities of Single Valued and Gen- 

 erally Analytic Functions,' by A. S. Chessin. 



' On the Analytic Theory of Circular Func- 

 tions,' by A. S. Chessin. 



Adjourned. Chas. Lane Pooe, 



Secretary. 



THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHING- 

 TON. 



The 256th regular meeting of the Society was 

 held Tuesday evening, January 5, 1897. The 

 program for the evening consisted of a Review 

 of Anthropological Progress during 1896, in ten 

 minute papers. 



Dr. Thomas Wilson, in his review of Pre- 

 historic Anthropology during the year 1896, 

 considered : 1. Pithecanthropus erectua, in which 

 he noted the decision of this Society, that the 



specimens found by Dr. DuBois in the Island of 

 Java were human remains, and that naturalists 

 concurred in this view ; that they belonged to 

 the Pliocene age, and the associated fossil verte- 

 brate fauna resembles that of the Siwalik hills 

 of India. Personally he (Dr. Wilson) refused 

 his adhesion to this theory and proposed to 

 await further developments. 2. Prehistoric 

 Man in Egypt. Late explorations and exca- 

 vations made in Chaldea, by a party from the 

 University of Pennsylvania, pointed to the dis- 

 covery of written characters, said to date about 

 5000 B. C, that of Egypt about 1000 years 

 less. He had seen the last will or testament of 

 an Egyptian, from Kahfln, dated about 2650 

 B.C. and has a copy of its translation, which 

 could be admitted to probate in our Orphans' 

 Court. 



The discoveries by General Pitt-rivers and 

 Prof. H. W. Haynes did much toward estab- 

 lishing the existence of a Pateolithic age in 

 that country. The latest researches were made 

 by Mr. de Morgan, and prehistoric settlements 

 were found scattered from Cairo to Thebes, a 

 distance of nearly 500 miles, and a collection 

 from these places was exhibited by Dr. Wilson, 

 which indicated human occupancy of the Nile 

 valley by a people in the Neolithic stage of cul- 

 ture and, consequently, much earlier than any 

 of those belonging to any Egyptian stage here- 

 tofore known. 



Prof. Otis T. Mason then spoke ' On the 

 Mato Grosso, South America, as a Mingling 

 Ground of Stocks,' and called attention to the ■ 

 investigations of Paul Ehrenreich, Carl von den 

 Steinen and Herman Meyer. In the region of 

 the Xingu, Tocantins and Maderia rivers are 

 mingled people speaking the same stock lan- 

 guages, Carib, Arawak, Ges or Tapuya, as 

 when Columbus made his first voyage of dis- 

 covery, and using implements found among the 

 inhabitants of the head waters of the Amazon 

 in western Brazil and eastern Peru, and also 

 those in use in eastern Brazil ; thus were the 

 cultures of the east and west parts, both dis- 

 similar, found associated in the Mato Grosso. 



There are two kinds of bows found in South 

 America : the long, black palm- wood bow, of 

 rectangular shape, of the western country; and 

 the broad, wide blade of red mimosa wood, of 



