Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/776

756 average number of members were present, but in all other respects the meeting was considered to be quite up to the standard of former years. Increased vigilance by the sectional committee, in the examination of papers offered, resulted in a marked improvement in the interest of the proceedings. Probably at no time in the history of the Association were so many papers rejected as at this meeting; not because they were inferior in merit to many presented at former meetings, but because it was felt that from year to year the time of the Association had been too much occupied in hearing papers read which fell short of a reasonable standard of excellence. It will be another move in the right direction, if the Association will peremptorily check useless discussion, which wastes more valuable time than even the reading of inferior papers. When the presidents of the sections shall have the courage to do this, then will the Association do its allotted work more effectually, and its primary object, the "advancement of science," will be more surely attained. It is worthy of note that the chief papers read in the biological section were in favor of the principle of evolution. "Facts for Darwin" were contributed by Profs. Wm. S. Barnard, E. D. Cope, E. S. Morse, Burt G. Wilder, Messrs. A. R. Grote and Henry Gilman, and Hon. L. H. Morgan. Abstracts of these and other valuable papers follow. The suggestion of ex-President Le Conte, that the national Government appoint a scientific commission for the investigation and repression of our more destructive insect pests, is timely and important, and we hope that, in the interest of both agriculture and pure science, the newspapers of the country will unite in urging the matter upon the attention of the authorities. The value of such commissions, when properly constituted, has been abundantly demonstrated in other countries, and, as Prof Riley pointed out in some remarks following those of Prof. Le Conte, there is no country in the world more in need of the services of such a commission than the United States at the present time.

The officers of the Association elected for the ensuing year are: President, Wm. B. Rogers, Boston; General Secretary, Thos. Mendenhall, Columbus, 0.; Vice-President Section A, Chas. A. Young, Hanover, N. H.; Vice-President Section B, Edward S. Morse, Salem, Mass.; Secretary Section A, Arthur W. Wright, New Haven; Secretary Section B, Albert H. Tuttle, Columbus, O.; Permanent Secretary, F. W. Putnam, Salem, Mass.; Treasurer, Thomas T. Boune, Boston.

The twenty-fifth meeting of the Association is appointed in the city of Buffalo, to commence August 23, 1876.

Evidence of Evolution.—The scientific world has for some time been in possession of the fossil wealth of Wyoming and Dakota, but the remains of those early mammalian races had not been placed in relations with the genesis of the human species till Prof Cope's investigations were published to the Association. The paper which details these researches and their results was no doubt the most important document presented to the Association, and hence we give a rather lengthy abstract of it. According to Prof Cope, to prove the doctrine of evolution, two propositions must be established: 1. That there exists an orderly succession of structure, corresponding with succession in time; and, 2. That the terms of this succession of structure (species, etc.) actually display transition, or connection by intermediate forms. The first is to be demonstrated from paleontology; the proof of the second is restricted to the observation of living varieties and the discovery of connecting forms.

The structure of the feet is taken to be the best criterion of descent or relationship. The author distinguishes several types of structure of the foot in recent land-mammals, as the plantigrade, the carnivorous, the horse, and the ox type. The simplest form of feet is seen in the lowest vertebrata, as lizards, salamanders, which have five toes, with numerous separate bones of the palm and sole which they apply to the ground in walking. The plantigrade type approaches this. In the hind-foot a succession of forms leads from this generalized, many-toed, plantigrade type, to the extreme specializations of the horse and the ox. In any figure of the bones of' the human foot, the reader will see two rows called tarsal bones, the second row