86 



SCIENCE. 



SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. ' 



In its annual report for 1880 the Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion purposes publishing a bibliography of American 

 Anthropology for that year. 'I he list will include not 

 only the titles of works in that special branch, where- 

 ever issued, but also the publications of American 

 scholars in all departments of this science, and you will 

 confer a favor on the establishment by sending it a copy 

 of each of your works upon the subject published during 

 the year 1880. Should this be impracticable, however, 

 please send a list of your own memoirs and of those of 

 the scientific associations with which you are connected, 

 bearing upon Anthropology, in each case giving the full 

 title, author's name, edition, imprint, size, number of 

 pages, maps, engravings, etc. If the publication forms 

 a part of a periodical or of the proceedings of a scientific 

 association, the fact should be distinctly stated. In the 

 case of separate works, references to periodicals in which 

 reviews have appeared should also be given. 



In order to give permanent value to this list and to 

 obviate delay in the appearance of the volume, you will 

 oblige the Institution by complying with its request as 

 soon as possible. 



Spencer F. Baird, 



Secretary Smithsonian Institution. 

 Washington, D. C, February 1, 1881. 



SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES OF WASHINGTON. 



The Biological Society.— At the Biological Society, 

 Fr.day evening, February 11, the entire evening was 

 spent in discussing the annual address of President 

 Theodore Gill, delivered at the previous meeting. Dr. 

 White and Professor Ward, in company. with the Presi- 

 dent, reviewed the arguments which have been offered 

 by various naturalists, including Professor Burt G. 

 Wilder and Dr. Coues, for the existence of anteroposte- 

 rior symmetry in the vertebrates. The conclusion reached 

 was, that, while there are many and very plausible reasons 

 in favor of this view, on the whole, the weight of testi- 

 mony is on the opposite side. Dr. King gave a descrip- 

 tion of one or two cases of hermaphroditism which had 

 come under his notice. This was the occasion of an 

 interesting discussion as to the meaning of the term and 

 the possibilities of the phenomenon in the human subject. 

 Professor Ward brought forward the arguments of 

 Haeckel for the establishment of a kingdom of nature in- 

 termediate between the Vegetable and the Animal 

 Kingdoms. 



The Anthropological Society, — The Anthropo- 

 logical Society met on Tuesday evening, February 15, 

 Vice-President Mason in the chair. The following 

 papers were announced :" Some peculiarities in the use 

 of moods in the principal Neo. Latin Languages. " — By 

 H. L. Thomas. " Aboriginal burial cave in the Valley 

 of the South Shenandoah." — By Elmer R. Reynolds. 

 "Amphibious aborigines ot Alaska." — By Ivan Petroff. 

 Mr. Thomas, the translator of the State Department, 

 announced that the object of his paper was to follow the 

 history of the Latin rules respecting the sequence of 

 moods in complex sentences in the languages of Southern 

 Europe, commonly called Romance or Neo-Latin. The 

 author directed attention to the fact that numerous 

 editors of the last few centuries had made changes in the 

 moods ot Latin verbs in order to bring them under certain 

 fixed rules from which the Latins had never varied. By 

 numerous citations from very old editions these changes 

 were exposed. 



The next point elaborated was the national peculiar- 

 ties which had manifested themselves in the adoption of 



Latin rules. The Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian 

 and Romance proper, had all affected the Latin usages 

 in the use of the subordinate subjunctive, but had done 

 this, so to speak, in their own way : which gives to the 

 subject a special ethnologic value. 



The author justly paid a high tribute to the opinion 

 set forth by Professor Fay, in a communication made 

 to the Society last year, that we are not to look in class- 

 ical Latin but in the old Roman folk-speech for the 

 ancestor of these borrowed forms. DuriDg the discuss- 

 ion which followed by Professor Antisell, Dr. Welling 

 and the chair, the interesting question was mooted 

 whether in the advance of scientific certitude the use of 

 subjunctive or doubtful forms were not sloughed off. 



Dr. Reynolds gave a brief but highly interesting de- 

 scription of a visit to a cave in Page valley, Virginia, 

 near the celebrated Luray cavern, containing numerous 

 human remains. The Smithsonian Institution had sent 

 out many hundreds of circulars, to every post-office in 

 the United States, but had failed to receive information 

 of a single mound or permanent remain in the valley of 

 Virginia. Dr. Reynolds, in the short space of a month 

 traced twenty-five mounds, ossuaries, forts, ateliers, and 

 bone caves. The paper was illustrated with a large 

 collection of human bones, stone implements, and 

 pottery. 



AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY. 



The February Conver saziotte of the American 

 Chemical Society took place Monday evening, the 21st 

 inst. No papers were read, but a number of interesting 

 specimens were exhibited. Among these was a quantity 

 of that poisonous alkaloid, nicotine, which Mr. William 

 Rupp, one of the curators of the society, had himself 

 prepared. Mr. P. Casamajor, by means of a microscope 

 with an 8-10 objective, showed a simple way to distin- 

 guish between pure sugar and that adulterated with glu- 

 cose. The former crystalizes in large and characteristic 

 forms while the glucuse appears much finer, and as poor- 

 ly defined cystals. So that when the two are mixed no dif- 

 ficulty would be had in distinguishing the adulterated 

 from the pure, provided a microscope was used. 



A large piece of glass painted with Balmain's Lumi- 

 nous Paint was exhibited by Mr. M. Benjamin. This paint 

 was discovered in 1877 by Mr. Balmain, an English chem- 

 ist, and has recently been brought to this country. It pos- 

 sesses the peculiar power of phosphorescence, or the prop- 

 erty of absorbing light during the daytime, and then emit- 

 ting it in the darkness. It is prepared by calcining oyster 

 shells with sulphur, and treating the resulting calcium 

 sulphide with the proper articles necessary to form a 

 paint. 



Its uses are numerous; miners lamps are painted with 

 it, and used instead of the ordinary safety lamp ; it has 

 been suggested that screens coated with this paint be 

 used for illuminating purposes along the galleries of 

 mines. Its marine applications are very important, the 

 painting of life buoys, and also stationary buoys, so that 

 they can be seen at night-time, the hulls and rigging of 

 ships treated in this manner might prevent collisions. 

 Divers costumes painted with it are found to yield light 

 after the diver has descended, in fact, sufficiently so to 

 enable him to distinguish quite minute objects. 



Tunnels may be illuminated by this paint. It has been 

 successfully employed to light railway cars at night time. 

 The time of night is readily told from clocks and watches 

 whose faces are coated with this substance. Signs and 

 advertisements are among the many uses to which it may 

 be put. More appplications will suggest themselves to 

 every one. M. B. 



N. Y., Feb. 22, 1681. 



