1880, | Proceedings of Scientific Societies. 757 
parasites. The Miris maidis and Empusa musce have been dis- 
cussed. 
— Three excellent papers on the three climates of geology, by 
C. B. Warring, have lately appeared in the Penn Monthly. They 
are mainly critiques of Croll’s speculations. 
— Mr. George A. Bates, Naturalist Bureau, Salem, Mass., an- 
nounces the publication of Life on the Sea-Shore, or the Marine 
Animals of our Coasts and Bays, by James H. Emerton. 
— Prof. A. E. Grube, of the University of Breslau, died June 3d. 
He was born in 1812, and will be remembered by his valuable 
treatises on the invertebrates, especially the worms or Annelides, 
in the knowledge of which he was facile princeps. 
— Prof. E. B. Andrews, of the Geological Survey of Ohio, and 
author of one of its final reports, died Aug. 21st, aged 59. 
— Gen. A. J. Myer, the head of the U. S. Signal Service, died. 
Aug. 24th, aged 51. i 
E E 
PROCEEDINGS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES. 
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE, 
Twenty-ninth Meeting, Boston, Aug. 25 to Sept. 1, 1880.—This 
proved to be the largest meeting of the association ever held, and 
the members received a right royal welcome from the citizens of 
Boston. The address of the retiring president, Prof. George F. 
Barker, was on “Some modern aspects of the Life Question.” 
He said that at the outset a reply to the great question, What is 
Life? must be evaded by the assertion that the answer is not yet. 
However, one of the greatest results of modern research has been 
to establish the fact that living organisms have been brought 
_ absolutely within the action of the law of the conservation of 
energy, and that whether it be plant or animal, the whole of its 
energy must come from without itself; in fact, an animal like a 
machine only transforms its energy. Lavoisier’s Guinea pig 
Placed in the calorimeter, gave as accurate a heat return for the 
energy it had absorbed in its food, as any thermic engine would 
have done. He next referred to the origin of muscular contrac- 
tion, and arrived at the conclusion that it was due to electrical 
phenomena, adding the interesting fact that the electrical dis- 
charge was not carried to the muscle by the nerve, but was gen- 
erated within the muscle itself. He said in conclusion that physi- 
ologically considered life- has now no mysterious passages, no 
Sacred precincts into which the unhallowed foot of science may 
not enter, and that research has day by day diminished the phe- 
nomena supposed to be vital, and that sooner or later every action 
of the living body will be pronounced chemical or physical. 
The address of Mr. Alexander Agassiz, vice-president of sec- 
