674 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XX. No. 516. 



which he draws attention to the ethics in the 

 case of the cope of Nicholas IV., which was 

 abstracted from the cathedral at Ascoli and 

 has been purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 AMERICAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY. 



During September and October the Amer- 

 ican Mathematical Society held three several 

 meetings. Of these the first in interest and 

 importance was the eleventh summer meeting, 

 held at St. Louis on September 16-17, thus 

 immediately preceding the congress of arts 

 and science of the Louisiana Purchase Expo- 

 sition. Nearly forty members of the society 

 attended this meeting, and there were present 

 also by invitation Professors Gino Fano, of 

 Turin, who brought greetings from Italian 

 colleagues, and Henri Poincare, of Paris, who 

 read a paper on ' Closed geodesies on a closed 

 convex surface,' a subject which had attracted 

 his attention on account of its importance in 

 connection with the discussion of trajectories 

 in celestial mechanics. A detailed account of 

 the meeting will be found in the November 

 number of the Bulletin of the society, which 

 also contains a report of the meeting of the 

 San Francisco section at the University of 

 California, October 1. At the latter meeting 

 the program included a conference on recent 

 investigations on the teaching of elementary 

 geometry. 



The one hundred and twentieth regular 

 meeting of the society was held at Columbia 

 University on Saturday, October 29, with an 

 attendance of twenty-four members. Presi- 

 dent Thomas S. Fiske occupied the chair. 

 Nominations of officers and members of the 

 council to be elected at the annual meeting 

 in December were adopted and ordered placed 

 oil the official ballot. The committee on the 

 financial support of the Transactions reported 

 a favorable outlook, several universities al- 

 ready having promised assistance in the form 

 of a subvention. The expense of publishing 

 the Transactions has been $2,000 per annum, 

 of which amount ten universities have thus 

 far contributed one half, the balance being 

 met by the society and by returns from sub- 



scriptions and sales. Committees were ap- 

 pointed to consider measures for providing for 

 the increasing burden of administration and 

 to audit the treasurer's accounts. 



The following papers were read at the Oc- 

 tober meeting: 



Dr. Edward Kasner: 'Contact transformations 

 and related systems of curves.' 



Dr. Max Mason : ' The doubly periodic solu- 

 tions of Au -{- \A{x,y)u^f{x,y) .' 



Professor E. B. Van Vleck : ' A proof of some 

 theorems on pointwise discontinuous functions-' 



Professor Henry Taber: ' Hypercomplex num- 

 ber systems.' 



Mr. J. C. MoREiiEAD : ' Note on a theorem of 

 Lucas on Fermat's numbers.' 



Professor E. W. Brown : ' On the completion 

 of the new lunar theory.' 



Professor Virgil Snyder : ' Quintic scrolls 

 having a taenodal or an oscnodal conic' 



Professor G. A. Miller : ' Groups of subtrac- 

 tion and division.' 



The following new members have recently 

 been admitted to the society: Mr. R. P. 

 Baker, Union Academy, Anna, 111.; Dr. W. 

 H. Bussey, Evanston, 111.; Dr. H. A. Con- 

 verse, Baltimore Polytechnic Institute; Mr. 

 A. M. Curtiss, State Normal School, Oneonta, 

 N. Y. ; Professor G. R. Dean, University of 

 Missouri; Dr. E. L. Dodd, University of Iowa; 

 Dr. Saul Epsteen, University of Chicago; 

 Professor R. R. Fleet, William Jewell College, 

 Mo. ; Professor E. D. Grant, Michigan College 

 of Mines; Mr. J. E. Higden, Shortridge High 

 School, Indianapolis, Ind. ; Dr. L. E. Kar- 

 pinski, University of Michigan; Dr. O. C. 

 Lester, Yale University; Professor TuUio 

 Levi-Civita, University of Padua; Professor 

 J. C. Lymer, Lawrence University, Appleton, 

 Wis.; Professor W. F. Moncreiff, Winthrop 

 College, S. C; Mr. Arthur Ranum, Univer- 

 sity of Wisconsin; Mr. C. S. Sisam, U. S. 

 Naval Academy; Miss Adelaide Smith, 

 Huguenot College, Wellington, S. A. ; Dr. 

 Clara E. Smith, Yale University; Professor 

 C. M. Snelling, University of Georgia; Pro- 

 fessor Eduard Study, University of Bonn; 

 Professor D. T. Wilson, Case School of Ap- 

 plied Sciences. The total membership of the 

 society is now 480. 



F. N. Cole, 

 Secretafy. 



