lxviii GENERAL SUMMARY, ETC. 



The American Association for the Advancement of Science 

 held its annual meeting at Dubuque, with the usual variety 

 of communications. The Academy of Natural Sciences of 

 Philadelphia has at last actually commenced the erection of 

 the new building for which it has been collecting funds for 

 so many years past, and it is hoped that before long, by the 

 transfer to the new quarters, it will secure the accommoda- 

 tions which its rapidly increasing library and museum have 

 been denied in the edifice at the corner of Broad and Sansom 

 streets. 



The other societies of the country have continued in their 

 useful work of aiding the investigations of specialists in dif- 

 ferent branches of science, and have published the usual num- 

 ber of memoirs and proceedings. Similar progress has also 

 been made by learned institutions abroad, to the list of which 

 large numbers have been added, so that at the present time 

 there is scarcely any town of a few thousand inhabitants in 

 Europe that does not possess a society devoted to science in 

 general or to some of its specialties. Of the Old World in- 

 stitutions of this character, we are informed that the Smith- 

 sonian Institution has over two thousand on its list of corres- 

 pondents. 



The losses in the ranks of science by the death of its vo- 

 taries during the year, will be found detailed, as far as we 

 have been enabled to ascertain them, in the department of 

 Necrology ; and it is with great regret that we have to report 

 that this embraces some of the first names in physical and 

 natural science, and that the number is considerably greater 

 than that recorded in 1871. 



Having thus completed, in however imperfect and partial 

 a manner, our summary of what appeared to us to represent 

 the principal stages of progress in the various branches of 

 science throughout the year, we have only to refer for details 

 to the pages of the volume, and to the systematic and alpha- 

 betical indexes accompanying it, by means of which any par- 

 ticular subject or fact can be reached, so far as any record 

 has been made in regard to it. 



