344 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IV. No. 89. 



tell of him, which runs as follows : The 

 first men had grown very wicked upon the 

 earth, and, in punishment, suffered a great 

 evil. The earth sent up from its bosom 

 mighty masses of water. Heavy rains fol- 

 lowed, the rivers swelled, and the sea over- 

 flowed the land, until all was covered with 

 water, and all were destroyed ; only Deuca- 

 lion, of all mankind, reimained alive. He 

 had built a box or ark, and his family, as 

 also pairs of all kinds of animals, entered 

 into it. All sailed in the ark as long as the 

 waters continued. So the Hellenes write of 

 Deucalion. To this the inhabitants of the 

 holy town add a very strange story ; that 

 in their land a great fissure opened in the 

 ^arth, and this received all the water. 

 Deucalion built altars after this happened, 

 and by the opening built a temple to Here. 

 I saw the opening. It is under the temple, 

 and is very small. As a sign and remem- 

 brance of this story, they do as follows : 

 Twice a year water is brought to the 

 temple from the sea. Not alone do the 

 priests bring this; out of all Syria and Ara- 

 bia, India, and from beyond the Euphrates 

 many go down to the sea, and all bring 

 water. They pour it out in the temple, 

 and it flows into the fissure, and the small 

 opening receives a great quantity of water. 

 And this ceremony, they say, Deucalion 

 appointed in the temple in remembrance of 

 the catastrophe and his rescue. A statue 

 of Here is in the temple, and another god, 

 which, although it is Zeus, they call by an- 

 other name. Between the two stands a 

 golden column. The Assyrians call it the 

 sign, give it no special name, and cannot 

 explain its origin or its form. Some refer 

 it to Dyonysus, others to Deucalion, others 

 to Semiramis. There is on its top a golden 

 dove. Therefore, it is said to represent 

 Semiramis. Twice a year it is taken to the 

 sea to bring water, as described above." 

 There were similar Hydrophoria at Athens. 

 Amheest College. B. K. Embeson. 



SECTION A — MATHEMATICS AND ASTRON- 

 OMY. 



The Yice-Presidential address before 

 Section A was necessarily omitted, as illness 

 in his family had prevented Prof. Story 

 from preparing an address and from attend- 

 ing the meeting. 



The vacancy in the chair was filled by 

 the election, by the Association, of Prof. 

 Alexander Macfarlane as Vice-President 

 for the Section. 



The following papers were presented be- 

 fore the Section, in number one less than 

 were read at the Springfield meeting last 

 year. 

 An Analog to De Moivre's Theorem in a Plane 



Point System : By E. W. Hyde. 



Three points, 6^,6^,62, at the vertices of an 

 equilateral triangle, are taken as a refer- 

 ence system, and an operator w is assumed 

 such that 



uen = e,, u^en 



: w^e, = we, = Ca. 



Then the action of the general operator 



in which x^ x^ are scalars, is discussed. 



The x^s are shown to be functions of a 

 scalar n and an angle 0, designated as 

 K (n, 6), such that 

 [Ko {n, 0) + «Zi {n, 6) + co^K^ {n, 6)^ 



= Ko {n\ kd) + (^Kj, {n\Jcd) + <^^ K^ « TcO), 

 which is the analog of De Moivre's the- 

 orem. Addition-multiplication theorems 

 for the ^-functions are found, and a trig- 

 onometry of them developed. 



Rational Scalene Triangles: By Artemus 

 Martin; read by the Secretary. 

 In this paper, which will appear in the 

 Mathematical Magazine, formulae are given 

 for calculating the sides of rational trian- 

 gles, with numerous illustrative examples. 

 New elements of the variable R Comce, result- 

 ing from observation in July and August, 

 1896, and 

 Photometric Observations of Colored Stars: 

 By Henry M. Parkhurst. 



