30 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE:^. 



and long continued study, discovered that the millions of ex- 

 amples of supposed architectural ornamentation were in reality 

 word paintings, recording events in the lives of peoples and 

 their rulers of thousands of years ago, and the scholars of the 

 present, by the discoveries of keys to some of the systems of 

 ancient languages, are enabled to read these records of long 

 forgotten peoples as readily as we read the pages of a book. 



PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED. 



"Standards of Purity for Food Products." U. S. Dept. Agriculture 

 Circular No. 10. 



"The Influence of Environment upon the Composition of the Sugar 

 Beet, 1902. " U. S. Dept. A.gi'iculture, Bureau of Chemistry, Bulletin 

 No. 78. 



"The Testing of Eoad Materials." U. S. Dept. Agriculture, Bureau 

 of Chemistry, Bulletin No. 79. 



' ' An Experimental Investigation Into the Flow of Marble. ' ' Dept. 

 Geology, No. 11, McGill University. 



"Muhlenbergia." By A. A. Heller. Vol. I. No. 3. 



"Some Practical Suggestions Concerning Seed Germination." No. 50, 

 Agriculture Exper. Stat., University of Arizona. 



' ' A Brief Account of the Principal Insect Enemies of the Sugar Beet. ' ' 

 Division Entomology, Bulletin No. 43, U. S. Dept. Agriculture. 



' * The Colorado Eubber Plant. ' ' Bulletin Colorado College Museum, 

 No. 1. 



Transactions for January, 1904. 



ASTEONOMICAL SECTION. 



January 18th, 1904. 



The meeting of the Section was' presided over by Chaii-man Knight, 

 who introduced the exercises of the evening by remarks on the Leonid 

 meteors of November, 1903, giving extracts from observations in Eng- 

 land and points on Continental Europe. 



Mr. Knight illus'trated on the blackboard a theory of the meteoric 

 phenomena, claiming that the Leonids move in the orbit of a comet, 

 which extends beyond the orbit of Uranus, and that they are probably 

 distributed in 'bunches or groups throughout the orbit. 



That the earth, in its orbital motion, may when it reaches the point 

 of intersection of the two orbits, strike one of these groups, giving rise to 

 an extensive meteoric shower; or it may strike a vacant space between 

 two groups, giving rise to the absence of any large number of meteors. 



The chairman also exemplified the interesting theory of the revolution 

 of binary stars about a common center, and the reniarka'ble agency of 

 the spectroscope in determining the direction of stellar movements. 



The cliairman then introduced Prof. George E. Hale, director of the 

 Yerkes Observatory, as one who had acquired fame as a careful observer 

 and as the inventor of the spectrohelioscope. 



Prof. Hale displayed many photographs taken at the Yerkes Observa- 

 tory representing the various instruments in use, the methods of pro- 

 cedure, and a num;ber of the heavenly bodies. He spoke at some length 

 of the work being accomplished in the closer investigation of the compo- 



