April 30, 1886.] 



SCIENCE. 



385 



three requisitions on the academy for information 

 and advice. In accordance with a request of the 

 secretary of the navy, a committee was appointed 

 to consider, first, the question of the adoption of 

 the universal day by the scientific bureaus of the 

 department ; second, the advisability of sending 

 an expedition to observe the solar eclipse of 

 August, 1886 ; and, third, the propriety of erecting 

 a new naval observatory on the site selected in 

 1882. This committee submitted its report some 

 months ago {Science, vii. 208). At the request of 

 the treasury department, a committee was ap- 

 pointed to consider certain problems connected 

 with the classification of wool for tariff purposes, 

 and their report has become the basis of action 

 by the department. More recently the treasury 

 department has called on the academy for infor- 

 mation affecting the subject of the duty on opium, 

 and a committee has been appointed for this pur- 

 pose. 



The academy is now charged with the admin- 

 istration of three funds intended to stimulate 

 astronomic research, and the trustees of these 

 fimds have decided to use portions of their in- 

 comes for suitable medals. The Henry Draper 

 medal is given for researches in solar physics, the 

 Lawrence Smith medal for studies of meteoric 

 bodies, and the Watson medal for any distin- 

 guished achievement in astronomy. The first 

 award of the Draper medal was made this year ; 

 and it was given to Prof. S. P. Langley, in recog- 

 nition of the importance of his researches in solar 

 physics. The Watson medal, with an honorarium 

 of one hundred dollars, was awarded to Prof. B. 

 A. Gould, in recognition of his distinguished ser- 

 vice to astronomy in founding and conducting the 

 Cordoba observatory. 



A biographical notice of the late Prof. Arnold 

 Guyot, prepared by Prof. J. D. Dana, was pre- 

 sented, and a similar notice of Prof. John W. 

 Draper by Professor Barker. Professor Dana's 

 memoir gave an account of Guyot's early life 

 which will be new to many of his American 

 friends, and particularly called attention to the 

 fact that Guyot had made a scientific examina- 

 tion of the Alpine glaciers two years before they 

 were studied by Agassiz, and anticipated a num- 

 ber of his most important conclusions. In a 

 paper read then before the Helvetic society, but 

 never printed until 1883, Guyot pointed out that 

 the upper portion of the glacier moves faster than 

 the lower, that the middle moves faster than the 

 sides, that the general motion is accomplished by 

 molecular motion, and he advanced th te nypoth- 

 esis that the blue bands are phenomena of the 

 original stratification of the formative snow. 

 Priority in these matters was not claimed by him, 



because, when he became soon afterward associat- 

 ed with Agassiz in glacial work, it was agreed that 

 Agassiz' share should be the study of the living 

 glaciers, and Guyot's the study of the erratic phe- 

 nomena and other vestiges of ancient glaciation. 



The only loss by death during the year has been 

 that of Prof. Edward Tuckerman of Amherst, 

 Mass. Prof. W. G. Farlow was selected to pre- 

 pare a biographical notice. 



The scientific proceedings of the academy occu- 

 pied the afternoons of the four days of the session. 

 Twenty-three papers were read and discussed, and 

 four others were read by title. A list of the 

 papers in addition to those announced last week 

 will be found in another column. Here we have 

 space to mention only a few. 



Dr. A. Graham Bell reported the progress of 

 his research regarding the ancestry of the deaf. 

 Discovering from the statistics of asylums for 

 deaf-mutes, and from the data of the tenth U. S. 

 census, that deafness is exceptionally prevalent 

 in Chilmark, in Martha's Vineyard, and in Ken- 

 nebec county, Me., he visited those districts, and 

 investigated the history of families affected. The 

 deafness in Kennebec county is connected with 

 that of Chilmark, and possibly derived from it. 

 In both districts there is abundant evidence of 

 heredity, and especially of atavism. In the fam- 

 ilies affected there were also found blindness, 

 insanity, idiocy, and deformity ; and in the Chil- 

 mark locality there has been such consanguineal 

 marriage as is common to sedentary rural popu- 

 lations. The distribution of deafness on the 

 island is closely related to that of soils. The 

 affected families extend over the entire island ; 

 but the affected individuals are, with two ex- 

 ceptions, confined to a district of peculiar geo- 

 logical characteristics, and the eastern boundary 

 of this district has been designated by local stu- 

 dents of vital statistics as the typhoid-fever line. 



By invitation, Mr. E. E. Peary, U. S. N., de- 

 scribed his plans for an expedition to Greenland 

 for exploration in the interior. He proposes to 

 make a preliminary excursion from Disco Bay, 

 and afterward an expedition from Whale Sound 

 to some point on the east coast, near the 80th 

 parallel. He prefers for the interior work a party 

 of three, with snow - shoes, skiddars, and sleds 

 modelled after the Hudson Bay pattern. 



Prof. S. P. Langley reported the progress of his 

 investigation of the invisible spectrum. Whereas 

 Newton determined the indices of refraction of 

 light-rays of wave-lengths ranging from .0003 to 

 .0007 mm., Professor Langley has carried the 

 determination to wave-lengths of .0400. He has 

 also demonstrated a simple relation between wave- 

 lengths and indices of refraction. The indices 



