Decembee 2, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



768 



the small birds, being very low. The public 

 interest was very great. 



The fish exhibit was large. Some diiliculty 

 was experienced at first in using water that 

 had been chemically treated to render it clear. 

 Harm to the exhibit was avoided by adopting 

 a closed water supply. 



The 390th reg-ular meeting of the society 

 was held on Saturday evening, November 5, 

 1904. Dr. C. W. Stiles spoke briefly of the 

 meeting of the International Committee on 

 Zoological Nomenclature which was held in 

 Berne , during the past summer. He stated 

 that the International Code of Nomenclature 

 had been revised only editorially. It is now 

 in press in Prance and will appear soon in 

 English, French and German. 



General T. E. Wilcox, U.S.A., presented 

 an illustrated lecture on ' The Flora of the 

 Western United States and Alaska.' He dis- 

 cussed particularly the plants of parts of the 

 Eio Grande Valley and southeastern Arizona. 

 Incidents of a long period of observation were 

 related and the peculiarities of various desert 

 plants mentioned. Especial reference was 

 made to the effects of aridity, irregularity of 

 rainfall and rapid evaporation. Medicinal 

 and otherwise useful plants were particularly 

 mentioned. Notes on certain plants of Al- 

 aska, a more humid region, were also given. 

 Wilfred H. Osgood, 



Secretary. 



THE CHEMICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 



The 152d regular meeting was held October 

 13, 1904, at the Cosmos Club. The program 

 for the evening was as follows : 

 The Action of Ammonium Chloride on Sul- 

 phur Tetrachloride. P. Fireman. 

 A Comparison of the Wet and Crucihle Fire 

 Methods for the Assay of Gold Tellurides, 

 with Notes on the Errors Incidental to the 

 Operation of the Fire Assay and Parting. 

 W. F. HiLLEBRAND and E. T. Allen. 

 The authors showed that the fire assay for 

 telluride gold ores, with proper precautions, 

 is accurate. Other errors in fire assays, espe- 

 cially the volatility of gold during cupellation 

 and the loss of gold in parting, were inves- 

 tigated. In regard to the former the error 



was shown to be much larger than has been 

 formerly supposed. The solubility of gold in 

 nitric and nitrous acid which has been 

 claimed by some authors was shown to be 

 entirely negligible. 



An Examination of Lard from -Cotton, Seed 



Meal Fed Hogs hy the Phytosterin Acetate 



Method of Bomer. L. M. Tolman. 



The author examined fifteen samples of 



lard prepared from hogs which had been fed 



on cotton seed meal. All of the samples gave 



positive tests with the Halpen reagent but 



in none of them could phytosterol be found. 



This confirmed the work of Solstein. It was 



found, however, that small amounts of added 



cotton seed oil could be detected by this 



method. Also that cotton seed oil that had 



been heated to destroy the Halpen reaction 



could be detected. L. S. Munson, 



Secretary, pro tern. 



The 153d meeting was held November 10, 

 1904, at 8 o'clock in the assembly hall of the 

 Cosmos Club. The president, Dr. E. T. 

 Allen, called the meeting to order. After the 

 election of Messrs. H. N. Stokes and S. S. 

 Vorhees as councilors for the ensuing year, 

 the following program was presented: 



The first paper, entitled ' Calcium Sulphate 

 in Aqueous Ammonium Sulphate Solution,' 

 was presented by Dr. E. C. Sullivan. The 

 results of the experiments showed that as the 

 concentration of the ammonium sulphate in- 

 creases the solubility of the calcium sulphate 

 at first diminishes, and then increases. The 

 general appearance of the curve corresponds 

 to that of the solubility of calcium sulphate 

 in sodium sulphate solutions, reported by 

 Cameron at a previous meeting of this society. 

 Conductivity determinations of the solutions 

 seem to show that the concentration of the 

 non-dissociated calcium sulphate does not re- 

 main constant. 



Under the title of ' A Statistical Analysis 

 of the Chemical Industries of the United 

 States,' Professor Charles E. Munroe re- 

 viewed the history of the census of manufac- 

 tures in the United States, describing briefly 

 the methods for securing and classifying the 

 returns and pointed out that while the sta- 



