ANNALS OF THE ACADEMY Si 
In 1881, when the Academy had been in existence for eighteen 
years, the number of papers which had been read at the scien- 
tific sessions was no less than 649. Of these papers only five had 
been published by the Academy, and the President, Professor 
Rogers, felt that it had not received the recognition by the 
scientific world which it would have received if the papers of 
each year had been issued promptly in a journal or some other 
publication of the Academy. He, therefore, proposed that they 
should be brought together annually and transmitted with the 
report to Congress. ‘Though the appeal for the support of the 
membership in this plan was urgent and was repeated several 
times, it seems not to have been generally responded to, and the 
reports continued as before to be made up of only an outline of 
the proceedings. It can be readily understood that in an organi- 
zation like the Academy, whose members are for the most part 
connected with educational or governmental institutions, and are 
engaged in extended investigations along more or less definite 
lines, it would be difficult to obtain a series of papers each year 
for publication. Many communications are necessarily of a 
preliminary or extemporaneous character, while, on the other 
hand, such completed papers as are available for publication by 
the Academy are often so comprehensive, and require so large an 
amount of illustration that they are unsuitable for an annual 
report. 
At the spring session of 1880 the Academy took notice in its 
Proceedings of two astronomical happenings of importance. 
Dr. B. A. Gould, a member of the Academy, who since 1870 
had been director of the Argentine National Observatory at 
Cordoba, completed his “ Uranometria Argentina” and atlas 
of the southern heavens, and upon receipt of a copy of that work 
the Academy passed this resolution: 
“ Resolved, That the Academy .. . . desires to express its high appreciation 
of the great and permanent value of that magnificent work, the fruit of the labors 
of our colleague during many years of absence from his country and home, and 
which reflects the highest credit on the wise liberality of the statesmen who have 
