138 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF [March, 



line (Lithothamnium glaciale) forms thick layers on the ocean floor,, 

 mostly in 60 to 120 feet of water and that "in the formation of the 

 future strata of the earth's crust in these regions it must become of 

 essential importance." Dr. Henry B. Bigelow, of Harvard University, 

 was quoted as stating that "algse probably form the greatest mass' 7 

 of the "shell sands" of Bermuda, and Sir John Murray, in reporting 

 the results of the famous Challenger Expedition, has recorded his 

 opinion that in three out of four analyzed samples of so-called coral 

 sand or mud from Bermuda the calcareous seaweeds and their 

 broken-down parts composed over 50 per cent, of the mass. As 

 Dr. Bigelow has remarked, the reports of the borings in Funafuti, 

 a "true coral " island of the Ellice group, recently published by the 

 Royal Society of London, are of special interest in this connection. 

 Borings were here made to a depth of over 1,100 feet and the materials 

 brought up indicate that the lime-secreting seaweeds have been of 

 greater importance then the corals in the formation of this island. 



The lecture was illustrated by about forty lantern-slides, showing 

 various types of calcareous seaweeds, and also by specimens from 

 the speaker's collections in the West Indies and elsewhere. 



Adjournment for luncheon. 



The meeting reconvened at 2.40 P.M., when the following com- 

 munications were made: 



Benjamin Smith Lyman: "Natural History Morality." 



Our predecessors, in founding the Academy, a hundred years ago, 

 probably little dreamed of any direct association of morality with 

 the study of natural history. They had doubtless been attracted 

 to the study by the beauty of its objects, as well, perhaps, as by an 

 instinctive feeling that a more thorough knowledge of them might 

 lead, not only to various commercial benefit, but to intellectual 

 broadening and improvement in many ways. Naturally, the first 

 thing to be done was to collect the facts, to describe and distinguish 

 by names the countless varieties of animals and plants; and then 

 to arrange them in systematic order. Whether the expression 

 "natural sciences" in the Academy's name was merely intended to 

 cover natural history or not, it certainly has turned out that, for 

 a hundred years, that has been almost exclusively the Academy's 

 field of work. Only through occasional strict construction and a 

 literal, logical interpretation of the society's name have astronomy, 

 chemistry, and other branches of physics been able, from time to 

 time, to assert and maintain a scanty foothold in the Academy's 

 proceedings. Through almost the whole of the first half of the 

 century, the natural history work was patiently, zealously, creditably, 

 and interestingly occupied with collecting, describing, naming and 

 systematizing' the natural forms that could be found in near and 

 distant parts of the world. Since then, Darwin's great discovery of 

 the origin of species through natural selection, so sympathetically 



