Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/886

862 good municipal government is the task of securing the practical application of the principles of science to the great fund of knowledge which has been won for us by science. I am continually impressed in my practical relation to the work of this great city with the vital relation which science bears to that work. More efficient government is to be sought along the lines of affairs which lie within the scope of our municipal government, and this is to be won for us by the investigators who have increased our knowledge of science within the last fifty years. . . . I am proud to say that we give a high place in everyday work to men of science who are giving technical application to the principles which have come to light through the investigations of abstract science. Work in the future will demand a fuller employment of men of science."

situation as to antarctic exploration is described by the President of the Royal Geographical Society as including a German expedition in course of organization on a liberal scale; the hope that the Norwegian Government may send out an expedition, perhaps under the leadership of Dr. Nansen; the Belgian expedition under M. de Gerlache; and the expedition under Mr. Borchgrevink, which is in an advanced state of preparation, and will shortly leave for Australia and South Victoria Land. The ship of this expedition, the Southern Cross, has been designed by the builder of the Fram, and has ten feet of solid oak at her bows, while she is thirty-two inches in thickness at her weakest point. Provision of sledges and dogs is made for the inland journey on the South Victorian continent, and the expedition will make it an object to explore that land and investigate the seas between there and Australia. Mr. Borchgrevink will take with him stores for three years and a supply of carrier pigeons.

vice-presidential address of Prof. Frank P. Whitman to the Physical Section of the American Association embodied a review of the present theories of color vision. The speaker regarded it as clearly proved that the number of color sensations is small, and that all hypotheses of a large number are untenable. The vision of white light is not a compound sensation, no matter how complex the light may be physically, but it is at the same time not a purely independent one, for there are some evident relations between it and vision by faint light, in which all the colors fade and tend to become white. A definite and highly probable function has been assigned to the visual purple, that of adaptation, and of causing or aiding vision in faint light. The number and variety of known human phenomena are very great and constantly increasing. Their interrelations grow every day more complex, and the actual mechanism governing those relations still remains almost entirely unknown. The various theories have at length arrived at such a stage of flexibility that, thanks to subsidiary hypotheses, almost any kind of visual result might be explainable. Perhaps the most hopeful line of research is that which, like the study of the visual purple, seeks to find a relation between color sensations and physical properties.

address of Prof. A. S. Packard, as chairman of the Zoölogical Section of the American Association, was devoted to a review of a Half Century of Evolution and the bearings of the theory on the problems of the nature and origin of life. The immediate effect of the acceptance of evolution on scientific study was, the speaker said, a happy one. Collectors, instead of narrowly gathering a specimen or two for their cabinets and being content therewith, are led to look at other things during their field excursions; protective mimicry, for example, or the relation of form to environment. The race of "species makers" is diminishing, while students of geographical distribution are taking their place, and the relation of form to past geographical changes is now discussed in a more philosophical way than heretofore. Speaking of the relations of new forms and new classes to geological changes, Professor Packard was careful to indicate that their probable origin lay rather in the results of the gradual extension of the land masses and the opening of new areas.

the merits of the various plans that have been proposed for preventing or tempering the floods of the Mississippi, Mr. William Starling finds that storage reservoirs have but little effect in reducing the height the water will reach in the stream below.