Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/868

848 In Section F, Biology, Prof. S. H. Gage, of Cornell University, set forth The Comparative Physiology of Respiration, in his address as vice-president. Respiration, he said, is a mere mechanical help to enable oxygen to permeate living substance. Oxidation is not direct in the living tissue, as in a burning candle, but the tissue takes the oxygen and makes it an integral part of itself as it does carbon and other elements, and when finally energy is freed the oxidation occurs and carbon dioxide appears as a waste product. An animated debate in this section turned upon Weissmann's criticisms of the Darwinian theory that characteristics acquired during the individual life are transmitted to offspring. Prof. Manly Miles cited Dr. Dallinger's experiments in support of Darwin's view. These experiments, conducted continuously for seven years, had gradually brought micro-organisms, extremely rapid in their rate of reproduction, to enduring a temperature of 158° Fahr.; their normal temperature having been 60°. Prof. C. V. Riley remarked that most insects are born orphans; if they do not inherit characteristics acquired through the experience of their ancestors, how can they come into the world so richly endowed in aptitude and instinct, and what can so clearly difference the instinct of one insect from that of another? In this section the pressure of papers has of late years been so excessive that it was decided to divide the section in two: what in future will be known as Section F will take zoology for its field, and Section G (G being hitherto an unappropriated letter) will be devoted to botany. It is proposed that during each annual meeting a day shall be set apart for joint sessions, when papers occupying ground common to zoölogy and botany will be read and discussed.

In H, the Anthropological Section, Mr. W. H. Holmes, as vice-president, delivered an address on The Evolution of Æsthetics. Prof. F. W. Putnam outlined the archæological and ethnological exhibits to be presented under his direction at Chicago next year. He has a staff of some seventy explorers at work gathering anthropometrical statistics and collecting material. His reproductions of Indian settlements will represent aboriginal life in North, Central, and South America. The Canadian Government, through Prof. "William Saunders, of Ottawa, will extend important co-operation; the New York State Commissioners for the World's Fair will provide an Iroquois stockaded village, with its characteristic long house of bark.

In the absence of Mr. S. Dana Horton, Section I, that of Economics and Statistics, chose Prof. Lester F. Ward as its vice-president. His thoughtful and provocative address treated The Psychological Basis of Social Economics. Economists, he said, have laid undue stress on the biological forces, the strictly individualistic aims, to be observed in human society. As intelligence and sympathy increase, the effect is that purely animal impulses are not simply qualified, but often reversed; competition steadily gives place to an ordered co-operation which, in the end, is much more gainful to all concerned than the first estate of universal conflict. The question as to what is best to be done with the municipal services which are in their nature monopolies, received some elucidation at the hands of Prof. E. W. Bemis, of the University of Chicago. He brought down to date his studies of municipal gas-works, maintaining that they had yielded substantial benefits as contrasted with works in corporate hands. Danville and Alexandria, Va., and Wheeling, W. Va., he said, operate their electric lighting as well as their gas supply municipally; and more than one hundred towns and cities in the United States own and manage electric-lighting plants.

The Entomological Club, which met concurrently with the A. A. A. S.,