1870. | Proceedings of Scientific Societies. 799 
PROCEEDINGS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES. 
Tue NATIONAL ACADEMY oF Scrences.—The academy held its 
mi-annual meeting in New York, Oct. 28-30, 1879, in the new 
; j : : P 
rs. rof. 
the following references n the recent discoveries in s Ce 
“Tn all branches of discovery we seem to be catc ching the clews 
of far-r a tN that stretch out where, as yet, no man’s 
foot has trodden. As among some of the most recent of these 
may be instanced the evidence, amounting almost to proved assur- 
ance, by which Prof. Whitney places the ean of man at 
least as far back as the Plio e have the a of 
r yer, almost demonstrating that substances hitherto 
regarded ments can egarded as compounds, and indi- 
o 
cating that all matter may be ultimately resolvable into simpl 
forms. There are the marvelous displays of what has been called 
the ‘radiant force’ of matter, as shown in the experiments of 
Prof. Crookes with new varieties a the radiometer. New ranges 
of profound inquiry are opening before us in the directions indi- 
cated by electrical inventions, such as the microphone and the 
iene ne 
The follo owing papers were read on aaa connected with 
biology and geology and anthropology: inal researches 
e topogr hat o the 
PESE regions of the App ares siete y A. Guyot; On 
the glycogenic Jaon of the liver, and On old river-beds o 
California, by Joseph Le Conte; Oa some new and remarkable 
forms of Ga from the lower Helderburg formation, and 
Notes on the Lycoperdites vanuxemi and allied forms, by James 
Hall; On the vegetation of ae cee coast of North America 
in the Cretaceous age, and ome interesting deposits of gold 
and silver ores in Utah and Se yJ. 
bers especially interested. His object was to call attention to the 
geological problems exhibited by the Catskill plateau. He did 
not regard the carving of the mountains as glacial work, though 
the evidence of glacial scratches was not wanting. e process 
y 
squeezed as it r The mountains which now occupy the place 
of that E were left by erosion, their valleys being carved 
