November 18, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



675 



AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY. NORTHEASTERN 

 SECTION. 



The fifty-fourth regular meeting of the 

 section was held Thursday evening, October 

 27, in the Lowell Building, Massachusetts 

 Institute of Technology, with President W. 

 H. Walker in the chair. About 135 members 

 and guests were present. Dr. Harvey W. 

 Wiley, chief of the bureau of chemistry, U. 

 S. Department of Agriculture, gave an ad- 

 dress on the ' Effects of Preservatives on 

 Health,' in which he described the experi- 

 ments made in Washington under his charge 

 to determine the effect of boric acid and 

 borax, when taken into the system daily with 

 the food for a long period of time. The con- 

 clusion drawn by the lecturer was that the 

 effect of the constant use of these preserva- 

 tives was on the whole somewhat injurious, 

 causing, in many cases, loss of appetite, head- 

 ache, and resulting in a diminution of weight, 

 and slight changes in the metabolism of phos- 

 phoric acid, nitrogen, fat, etc. 



Arthur H. Comey, 



Secretary. 



PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OP WASHINGTON. 



The 588th regular meeting was held Oc- 

 tober 15, 1904, Past-president Dall in the 

 chair. 



The death since the last meeting of Messrs. 

 A. Lindenkohl and F. G. Hadelfinger was an- 

 nounced. 



Mr. P. W. Clarke spoke on ' Chemistry at 

 the International Congi-ess of Arts and Sci- 

 ence.' The papers read were of high char- 

 acter and on the chemical sides the congress 

 was a decided success. 



Mr. O. H. Tittmann gave a brief account 

 of his work the past summer as one of the 

 commissioners for ' The Demarkation of the 

 Alaskan Boundary.' A strip of this line some 

 500 miles long by 20 to 30 miles wide had 

 been surveyed by the phototopographic meth- 

 od in previous years, and the results had been 

 mapped for the High Joint Commission in 

 London; the findings of the commission had 

 defined the boundary line, and the five field 

 ■parties this summer were engaged in erecting 

 monuments over a portion of it. 



Mr. L. A. Bauer then described ' A Method 

 of Disclosing System of Magnetic Forces 

 Causing the Secular Variation of the Earth's 

 Magnetism.' It was pointed out that until 

 an analysis of the secular variation forces has 

 been made in a similar manner to that em- 

 ployed by Gauss for the permanent magnetic 

 field, it is useless to theorize as to the cause 

 of the secular variation. Such an analysis 

 has been undertaken by the Department of 

 Terrestrial Magnetism of the Carnegie Insti- 

 tution, an exhaustive compilation and discus- 

 sion of the available data being made for the 

 entire earth. Some preliminary results of 

 the analysis as applied to certain well-sur- 

 veyed areas, as, for example, the United States, 

 were given in order to show the fruitfulness 

 of the methods employed. The system of 

 magnetic forces causing the secular variation 

 in the United States during the period 1885- 

 95 operated in opposition to that of the per- 

 manent field, i. e., it acted as a demagnetizing 

 system of magnetic forces directed opposite 

 to those of the earth's permanent magnetiza- 

 tion. Charles K. Wead, 



Secretary. 



the anthropological society op WASHINGTON. 



Dr. Ales Hrdlicka presented a photograph 

 of a recent Crow burial in Montana, showing 

 a well-covered body lying on a platform ele- 

 vated on four-forked poles. 



Dr. Hrdlicka also showed two crania with 

 the same variety of intentional deformation, 

 one from Peru and the other from Vancouver 

 Island. The Peruvian skull presents an ex- 

 treme degree of deformation, which was pro- 

 duced by surrounding the infant's head with 

 tightly drawn bandages. Strangely enough, 

 Peru and a portion of the northwest coast of 

 North America, including Vancouver Island, 

 are the only localities where this rather com- 

 plicated form of mutilation is found on the 

 American continent. 



Dr. Swanton gave a short account of the 

 Tlingit Indians of Alaska whom he has re- 

 cently studied. There were formerly about 

 fourteen local groups of these people, divided 

 into numerous families and, socially, into two 

 exogamous clans, or sides. A small division 



