GOG ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 

 CAMBRIDGE MEETING OF NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



The National Academy of Sciences, which by its charter 

 holds its annual meeting in Washington, is also authorized 

 to have intermediate meetings at such times and places as 

 may be decided upon. For several years such meetings were 

 held in the month of August, at Newport, Northampton, or 

 elsewhere. After a lapse of two years an intermediate meet- 

 ing was held, on the 21st of November last, at Cambridge, in 

 the hall of the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Quite a 

 large attendance was present, fully equal to that at the reg- 

 ular meetings in Washington. Numerous interesting papers 

 were presented, among them one by Professor Agassiz upon 

 the present condition and prospects of the great Museum of 

 Comparative Zoology under his direction. In this he gave 

 an account of the immense mass of material collected by him 

 during the voyage of the Jlassle)*, and expressed the earnest 

 hope that proper facilities might be granted by those who 

 controlled the museum in making such disposition of these 

 collections as would enable them to be of service to the sci- 

 entific world at large. 



He also communicated a paper upon the different modes 

 of dentition among the sharks, and called attention to the 

 fact that many diiferent genera had been heretofore estab- 

 lished upon what are simply successive stages of one species. 

 (Tne of the most interesting papers of the meeting was that 

 by Professor Young on the results of the Coast Survey as- 

 tronomical expedition to the Rocky Mountains. As we have 

 already given the principal facts of these discoveries in these 

 pages, we need not reproduce them. 



Other papers presented to the meeting of the Academy 

 were, one by Professor Hilgard on the International Standard 

 Commission, of which he is a member, and whose meeting he 

 attended during his last visit to Europe. He stated that the 

 principal conclusions reached by the committee were that the 

 international meter is to be of the length of the meter of the 

 Paris archives at the temperature of melting ice. Its mate- 

 rial is to be an alloy of platinum and iridium, in the propor- 

 tion of nine to one ; its form is to be similar to an H beam, 

 but with the upright sides sloped like an X. Several copies 

 are to be preserved at a nearly constant temperature, as tests 

 of the invariability of length. 



