152 Journal or the Mitchell Society [. December 
Latin School Prof. M. T. Bogert, President of the Society deliv- 
ered an address on “The Function of Chemistry in the Conserva- 
tion of Our Natural Resources.” It was shown that chemistry 
does play and will play a more important role in the conservation 
of our resourses by developing better methods of working up the 
natural resources and new methods of utilizing waste products. 
Thursday forenoon at the business meeting resolutions of respect 
on the death of Wolcott Gibbs were passed. The following 
addresses were given at this time: “The Future of Agricultural 
Chemistry” by H. J. Wheeler, “The Quantitative Study of 
Organic Reactions” by S. F. Acree, “The Classification of Carbon 
Compounds” by Edward Kremers. In the evening a subscription 
dinner was given at the Hotel Belvedere. It was an unusual suc- 
cess, not only in point of cuisine but in the great enthusiasm and 
jollity that was manifest throughout the evening. On Friday 
adjourned meetings of the sections were held and a trip was made 
to the Maryland Steel Company’s works at Sparrow’s Point. 
William R. Whitney, Director of the Research Laboratories of the 
General Electric Co. was elected president for the coming year. 
The following were elected Councilors-at-Large : W. Lash Miller, 
Chas. H. Herty, S. W. Parr, W. H. Walker. The summer 
meeting of 1909 will be held at Detroit and the winter meeting 
at Boston. Alvin S. Wheeler. 
physics 
The attendance at the meetings of Section B was larger than 
ever before, the Physics lecture room at the Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity being comfortably filled at almost every session. No 
striking discoveries were reported, and there was not the enthusi- 
asm which greeted for example, the papers of Rutherford at earlier 
meetings, but the interest was sustained throughout, and the 
discussions were incisive and entertaining. The noticeable feature 
was that while all the speakers seemed to realize that the electron 
theory is yet simply a working hypothesis, still the language and 
the conceptions of that theory were constantly used to explain 
phenomena described in various papers. The listener could not 
fail to discern a quiet note of confidence in the substantial accur- 
