Geology and Natural History. 479 



wbich be has apparently verified with his specimens in hand. 

 The range of authorities laid under contribution is wide and has 

 been thoroughly traversed by the author. We naturally ex- 

 pected to see in his list Wiesner's Die Rohstoffe des Pflanzen- 

 re'iches, and Baron von Mueller's Extratropical Plants, but 

 the other omissions which have come to notice are slight and 

 unimportant. It seems a pity that this valuable compendium 

 could not have been enriched by plates of the fibers themselves 

 both in their commercial and ultimate reductions. But, even as 

 it stands, it will set many a cultivator thinking in what way new 

 fiber-plants can be obtaiued for experiment here. g. l. g. 



II. Miscellaneous Scientific Intelligence. 



1. National Academy of Sciences. — The autumn meeting of 

 the National Academy of Sciences was held at Boston, beginning 

 November 16. The following is a list of the papers accepted for 

 reading : 



R. S. Woodward: The mass of the earth's atmosphere. 



W. A. Rogers: On a final determination of the relative lengths of thelmperia 

 yard and of the meter of the International Bureau. 



C. Barus : The secular softening of cold hard steel. 



T. C. Mendenhall: On the elastic resistance of steel knife-edges 



A. Hyatt : Evolution and migrations of land shells on Hawaiian islands. 



R. H. Chittenden : The influence of borax and boric acid on nutrition. 



C. S. Minot: Embryological observations. 



Ira Remsen : On a new method of obtaining derivatives of guanidine ; On the 

 boiling points of mixtures of benzine and alcohols; On double halides containing 

 organic bases 



A. A. Michelson and S. W. Stratton: Results obtained with a new har- 

 monic analyzer. 



E. S. Morse : On the ancient molluscan fauna of New England. 



C. R. Cross : On a new application of the wave siren. 



C. L. Norton: New apparatus for the comparison of thermometers and for the 

 determinations of the heat of combustion of fuels. 



0. C Marsh: Recent observations on European Dinosaurs; The Jurassic 

 formation of the Atlantic coast — Supplement 



A. E. Verrill: Ovarian variations and cannibalistic selection as factors in the 

 evolution of species;" Notable instances of free variation nearly unchecked by 

 natural selection: Some of the important factors in the evolution of the marine 

 animals of coral-reef seas. 



S. C. Chandler : Comparison of the theory of the motion of the pole with 

 recent observations. 



J. W. Powell : An hypothesis to account for movements in the crust of the 

 earth. 



S. Weir Mitchell and Alonzo H. Stewart: A contribution to the study of 

 the action of the venom of the Grotalus adamanteus upon the blood. 



S. F. Emmons: Report on the international geological congress at St. Peters- 

 burg in August, 1897. 



A lecture was delivered by John Trowbridge at the Jeffersonian Physical Labo- 

 ratory, Cambridge, on electrical discharges, with exhibition of apparatus for 

 obtaining high voltages 



At the business meeting of the Academy on Nov. 17, it was an- 

 nounced that Miss Alice Bache Gould, daughter of the late Benja- 

 min Apthorp Gould, had presented a sum of $20,000, to be known 



A.M. Jour. Sci.^ Fourth Series, Vol. IV, No. 24.-^Dm, 1897. 

 33 



