6o6 



SCIENCE. 



THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY. 



The annual meeting of the American Chemical So- 

 ciety was held on Friday evening, December 2nd, with 

 Vice President Leeds in the chair. 



After the reports from the various officers were read, 

 the society proceeded to the election of officers to serve 

 during the coming year. 



The results were as follows : 



President: J. W. Mallett. 



Vice Presidents : A. R. Leeds, W. M. Habirshaw, 

 E. Waller, L. A. Goessman, A. B. Prescott, N. P. 

 Lupton. 



Treasurer ; T. O'C. Sloane. 



The remainder of the ticket, as announced .in the 

 previous notice, were all elected with the single exception 

 of the treasurer, whose name was substituted by that c f 

 Dr. Sloane, whose name on the nominating commit- 

 tee was replaced by that of Mr. A. P. Hallock. 



The board of directors will be as follows: 



P. Casamajor, Jas. H. Stebbins, Geo. A. Prochazka, 

 H. Endeman, H.' Morton, P. de P. Ricketts, T. O'C. 

 Sloane, A. R. Leeds, W. M. Habirshaw, E. Waller, C. F. 

 Chandler, J. B. F. Hernshoff, W. E. Geyer. 



The reading of the papers announced for the evening 

 was postponed until the conversazione, which will take 

 place on the evening of the i6tb inst. 



"J. W. Mallett," says Prof. Silliman, "has for many- 

 years been an industrious worker, publishing original re- 

 searches in chemical subjects, which form important 

 contributions to our science." 



Among the very first to work in the then newly isolated 

 element, Tellurium, was Prof. Mallett. Under the direc- 

 tion of the celebrated Woehler these researches were 

 made, and, in recognition of their merit, the university at 

 Gottingen conferred the doctorate on the youthful scien- 

 tist. Coming to this country, for Prof. Mallett is an 

 Englishman by birth, he located himself at Philadelphia 

 with Mr. J. C. Booth who, at that time, had among his 

 students and assistants T. H. Garrett, the two Morfits, 

 McCulloh and others whose names have since become 

 distinguished. 



Later on, in the records of American chemistry, the 

 subject of our sketch was appointed Professor of Chem- 

 istry at the University of Alabama, and at present he fills 

 the same position at the University of Virginia ; he also 

 lectures in applied chemistry before the students at the 

 Johns Hopkins University. His printed papers are very 

 numerous, most of the earlier ones may be found in Silli- 

 man's Journal, while those of a more recent date have 

 been published in the American Chemical Journal. To 

 this latter periodical he has been a faithful contributor 

 since its commencement, and its columns have been en- 

 riched by his very interesting review " Of the Progress of 

 Science Among the Industrial Arts During the Last Ten 

 Years." Prof. Mallett served as one of the judges in 

 Group III at the Centennial Exhibition, and furnished for 

 the governmental reports a very satisfactory resume" of 

 the sugar industry of the United States. 



He is a member of the Royal Society of Great Britain, 

 of the Chemical Societies of London, Berlin and Paris, as 

 well as many other learned bodies both at home and 

 abroad. The American Chemical Society have made a 

 wise selection, and it is to be hoped that its new presi- 

 dent will resume that desirable custom of presidential 

 addresses, which unfortunately has been omitted during 

 the past few years. M. B. 



Commander Cheyn e has started on his trip to Canada, 

 and wili return to New York about the 20th of January ; 

 in the interval Mr. Henry Walton Grinnell, who has con- 

 sented to become Sscretary of the committee to be 

 formed to promote this expedition, will attend to matters 

 requiring early attention. 



THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



Dec. 5. 1881. 



Regular Business Meeting. 



The President Dr. J. S. Newberry, in the Chair. 

 Twenty six persons present. 



Dr. Newberry exhibited an ancient perforated 

 stone axe from Europe, consisting of dioryte, and re- 

 marked that the aboriginal tribes of America never 

 attained to the degree of skill required in the perfora- 

 tion of stone implements for the insertion of wooden 

 handles. 



The following paper was read by Dr. Alexis A. 

 Julien. 



The Volcanic Tuffs of Challis, Idaho, and 

 other Western localities. 



( Abstract). 



In a paper recently read before the Academy it was 

 shown that a certain compact white almost structureless 

 rock, often porcellanous in texture, occuring abundantly 

 in the Western Territories and variously styled " trachyte," 

 "rhyolyte," "porphyry," etc., {e.g., at Leadville, Colorado, 

 in the Black Hills of Dakota, etc. ), is a sedimentary 

 form of a highly silicious volcanic tuff, probably derived 

 from the finest detritus of trachytes, rhyolytes, and quartz- 

 porphyries. A series of specimens collected by Prof. 

 Newberry, during the last and previous summers, and 

 kindly put in the author's hands for lithological examina- 

 tion, has furnished the material for the following additional 

 notes on this interesting but neglected group of wide- 

 spread American rocks. 



1. Coarse pumice-tuff of Challis, Idaho. 



The rock is quite compact, chistose, of a gray color 

 with dull white spots. The latter consists of pumice in 

 finely fibrous grains, from 1 to 5 mm. in length. Quartz 

 and feldspar are seen in small angular flakes, sometimes 

 reaching 0.5 mm. in length : hornblende commonly in 

 fibrous black fragments, about 1 mm. in diameter: and 

 much biotite, brownish-green, sometimes brownish-black, 

 with greasy lustre, in hexagonal scales, often up to 2 to 3 

 mm. in size. 



The thin sections present under the microscope numer- 

 ous grains, generally angular, of several minerals, varying 

 in size up to 3 or 4 mm. : pumice in rounded to sub-angu- 

 lar fawn-colored fragments lying at all angles, commonly 

 made up of straight or curved fibres, and often including 

 glass lenses filled with crystallites : atrichinic feldspar, in 

 clear grains, sometimes including minute globules of glass, 

 and possessing fine lamellation, beautifully striated in 

 polarized light, the remaining traces of crystalline outlines 

 indicating that these grains are all of fragmentary, never 

 of indigenous formation : quartz, in water-clear angular 

 grains,o.2 to 1. 6mm. long, retaining more frequent and per- 

 fect traces of their crystalline forms, their sides being often 

 very ragged, curiously and deeply eroded into rounded in- 

 dentations, while within occur numerous inclusions of the 

 ground mass and of scales of biotite, long greenish nee- 

 dles of hornblende, and sub-angular drops of a brownish- 

 violet glass with one or several fixed bubbles of gas : 

 biotite in abundant irregular scales, 0.2 to 1.3 mm. 

 long, brown inclining to maroon or brownish-yellow, 

 cloudy to opaque, with some dichroism remaining in the 

 striated sections ; hornblende in brownish-green, strongly 

 dichroic, fibrous crystalline flakes: opacite, probably 

 magnetite, and ferrite or iron-oxide, in dusty particles or 

 groups in the biotite scales and among the pumice fibres. 

 The fine groundmass is mainly composed of minute frag- 

 ments, fibres, scales, etc., of all these minerals : also in 

 large part of solid globules of fawn-colored glass, or of 

 thin and apparently hollow shells, or of fragments of 

 quartz or feldspar coated with a glass crust. Many of 



