30 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XI. No. 262. 



Assistant Superintendent Tittmann, with a 

 view to finding the gravitational correction in 

 mercurial barometric readings by comparing 

 the atmospheric pressure as indicated by the 

 mercurial column with the true atmospheric 

 pressure as deduced from the temperature of 

 unconfined steam. He then proceeded to re- 

 late his own considerations and experiments 

 concerning the possibility, in times of ex- 

 ceptional calm at sea, of using the Electric 

 Clepsydra for the measurement of the relative 

 quantities of mercury discharged in equal inter- 

 vals of time at different places from an orifice 

 in the bottom of a vessel of comparatively large 

 cross-section, and also concerning the possibility 

 of ascertaining the changing relation, with 

 change of place between a given mass, and its 

 weight, by the use of a modification of the 

 standard aneroid barometer in which the 

 vacuum chamber has been replaced by a heavy 

 mass. E. D. Preston, 



Secretary. 



ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 



The 296th regular meeting of the Society 

 was held Tuesday evening, December 5, 1899. 



Miss Alice C. Fletcher read a paper on ' The 

 Building of the Earth Lodge ' describing its 

 minute structure, purpose and variety. 



Dr. "Washington Matthews read a paper on 

 ' The Earth-Lodge in Art, ' in which he stated 

 that the earth-lodge was the most commodious 

 aboriginal structure existing in America north 

 of New Mexico. Henry in 1807 measured one 

 in the old Mandau Village at Knife Eiver which 

 was 90 feet in diameter. Thousands of such 

 lodges, inhabited by tribes of widely different 

 stocks, existed in the Mississippi Valley at the 

 time of the Columbian discovery ; their remains 

 are scattered from North Dakota to Louisiana 

 and from Western Kansas to Eastern Tennes- 

 see. 



Dr. Matthews stated that the embellishments 

 in works of ethnographj' and travel were often 

 false, and tended to lead the student astray 

 rather than to aid him. He gave a number of 

 general instances of false illustration in eth- 

 nography, but spoke chiefly of the misleading 

 pictures of the earth-lodge published in various 

 works. He exhibited pictures taken from the 



works of Gass, Catlin, De Smet and Morgan, 

 and compai-ed them with photographs of the 

 real lodge. The most faithful pictures of the 

 lodge not photographic were those of Mr. 

 Bodmer, the artist who accompanied the Prince 

 of M6d. 



Mr. Jas. Mooney read a paper entitled ' The 

 Earth-Lodge in the Gulf States.' 



J. H. McCOEMICK, 



Secretary. 



BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 



At the 314th meeting on December 16th, 

 Lester F. Ward spoke of ' the Fossil Forests 

 of Arizona,' saying that they were of Mesozoic 

 age, the strata containing the petrified trunks 

 ranging from just above the Permian up to and 

 including the Upper Trias ; the formation ex- 

 tended northwards into Utah. The territory 

 in which the petrified forest lay was in Apache 

 Co., east of Holbrook, but while the trunks 

 were found over a very considerable tract the 

 best portion of the ' Forest ' was embraced in 

 an area about eight miles square. In some por- 

 tions of this the petrified logs lay much more 

 thickly than they could have stood when living. 

 In fact these trees did not lie where they had 

 grown, but had been transported thither in 

 Mesozoic time by strong and swift currents and 

 had then been rapidly buried in sand. The 

 trees were completely silicified and so well 

 preserved that the microscopic structure could 

 be clearly made out, showing that they were 

 related to the Araucarian Pine of the Southern 

 Hemisphere ; hence the genus had been named 

 Araucari oxylon. The speaker stated that his 

 recent visit to the petrified forest was the 

 result of a request from the General Land 

 Office for a report as to the desirability of re- 

 serving the most interesting portion as a national 

 park, a^memorial to Congress to that effect hav- 

 ing passed the Legislature in 1895. Owing to the 

 visits of tourists, the more beautiful specimens 

 were being steadily carried away and destroyed, 

 while many car loads had been removed to be 

 cut, polished and made into ornaments. Owing 

 to the extreme hardness of the silicified trunks, 

 it had been proposed to utilize them in the 

 manufacture of a substitute for emery, and a 

 crushing plant had actually been erected, al- 



