SCIENCE. 



SCIENCE: 



A Weekly Record of Scientific 

 Prog r ess. 



JOHN MICHELS, Editor. 



Published at 



229 BROADWAY, NEW YORK. 



P. O. Box 3838. 



SATURDAY, APRIL 23, 1881. 



The growth of abstract science in this country is 

 perhaps no better illustrated than by the advance 

 which has been made of late years in the various de- 

 partments of mathematics. It is only a few years 

 since Prof. Peirce was about the only person in the 

 United States who held a position among the original 

 mathematicians of the world, while to-day there are 

 in this country a number of persons whose writings 

 are destined to rank among the classics, and a journal 

 of mathematics of the highest rank is published under 

 the auspices of the Johns Hopkins .University and sus- 

 tained almost entirely by American contributors. 

 Among the best of the abstract writers referred to is 

 Mr. William Ferrel, who has been hitherto best known 

 by his tidal researches, but is now engaged in investi- 

 gations on the mathematical principles of meteoro- 

 logy. His latest work, just published by the Coast 

 Survey, is now before us, and although nominally con- 

 sisting only of researches on Cyclones, Waterspouts 

 and Tornadoes, is in reality a valuable contribution 

 to the theory of storms in general. 



The Board of Directors of the Ohio Mechanics' 

 Institute have organized a " Department of Science 

 and Arts" for the purpose of increasing the usefulness 

 of the Institution. A Section of Mechanics and 

 Engineering under the chairmanship of Professor H. 

 T. Eddy, and one of Chemistry under Professor F. 

 W. Clark, have been arranged. Meetings for the 

 public discussion of scientific subjects will be held 

 once a month, and various other arrangements are in 

 progress which will contribute to the success of the 

 present attempt to provide increased facilities for 

 technical and scientific education for the youths of 

 Cincinnati. 



SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES OF WASHINGTON. 



The Biological Society, Washington. — Since 

 our last report the following papers have been read : 

 " Roan Mountain, North Carolina, and its Flora," by Prof. 

 J. W. Chickering, Jr.; "Notes on the Flowering of Sola- 

 tium rostratum and Cassia chamaecrista, with illustra- 

 tions," by Prof. J. E. Todd ; " A Critical Review of Giin- 

 ther's Ichthyology," by Prof. Theodore Gill ; " On the 

 Mortality of Marine Animals in the Gulf of Mexico," by 

 Mr. Ernst Ingersoll : " A Statistical View of the Flora of 

 the District of Columbia," by Prof. Lester F. Ward. It is 

 to be regretted that the absence of our Washington cor- 

 respondent from the meetings deprives us of abstracts 

 of these valuable papers. 



The Anthropological Society.— The Constitu- 

 tion of this society, now in its third year, makes it ob- 

 ligatory upon the President to prepare at the commence- 

 ment of each year, a summary of the transactions of the 

 organization during the past year. At the close of the 

 first year, the President overlooked this fact, but made 

 ample amends at the commencement of the third year by 

 preparing a pamphlet containing both annual addresses, 

 and copious abstracts of all the papers that had ever been 

 read. 



Since our last report, the following papers have been 

 read : " The Savage Mind in the Presence of Civiliza- 

 tion," by Prof. OtisT. Mason ; " Prehistoric Trephining," 

 by Dr. Robert Fletcher ; " Some Superstitions of the 

 Sioux Indians," by Dr. H. Yaddow ; " The Chief's Son and 

 the Thunders : An Omaha Myth," by Rev. J.Owen Dorsey. 



The design of the first named paper was two-fold : 

 first, to show that the presence of other peoples better 

 furnished and skilled in some respect had always oper- 

 ated as a stimulus in the onward march of civilization ; 

 and second to draw attention to the fact that in the 

 treatment of the Indians, Chinese, and Negroes, the phe- 

 nomena of the past history of civilization were being 

 re-presented. The two latter papers were recitals of 

 exceedingly interesting Indian myths, Dr. Fletcher, 

 who is associated with Dr. Billings in publishing " Index 

 Medicus," having collected all that could be gathered on 

 the subject of prehistoric-trephining, from two years read- 

 ing, gave an elaborate summary of his investigations. 



The Philosophical Society of Washington.— 

 The Spectrophone.— At the 198th meeting of the Phil- 

 osophical Society of Washington, Prof. Alexander Graham 

 Bell communicated the announcement of his discovery of 

 the Spectrophone, the latest outgrowth of the Photophone. 



In a paper read before the American Association for 

 the Advancement of Science, in which he announced the 

 discovery of the photophone, Mr. Bell ventured the pre- 

 diction that probably all matter would be found to pos- 

 ses sonorous properties of the same nature as those 

 manifested by the discs used in that instrument. More 

 recent investigations in Europe with gases and liquids 

 have fully verified this prediction. Any liquid or gas 

 placed in a test tube and exposed to the action of a beam 

 of light condensed upon it by a lens can be made, by 

 means of an interrupter, to emit musical tones. This has 

 been shown by Prof. Tyndall in his memoir, to the Royal 

 Society, on Radiant Heat. Some substances thus emit 

 feeble sounds, others stronger ones. Iodine vapor, Ni- 

 trogen Oxide and Bromine give very loud sounds. It is 

 found that those substances which emit loud sounds are 

 those which absorb heat in a high degree, and among 

 these lamp-black is especially remarkable. It has been 

 questioned whether such sounds are provoked by the 

 luminous rays or by the dark ones. M. Mercadier ex- 

 pressed the belief that the inciting rays are the red and 

 dark ones. This led Mr. Bell, with the assistance of Mr. 

 Sumner Taintor, to experiment with the sonorous proper- 

 ties of Carbon Disulphide, actuated by the light of the 

 Spectrum. 



