GENERAL SUMMARY 



OF 



SCIENTIFIC AND INDUSTEIAL PEGGEESS 

 DUEING THE YEAE 1875. 



MATHEMATICS AND THEORETICAL MECHANICS. 



Ox account of the importance of the cultivation of pure 

 Mathematics among American scientists, we note first that 

 the editor of The Analyst, Professor J. E. Hendricks, of Des 

 Moines, Iowa, states that a number of his subscribers have 

 concluded to discontinue their subscriptions, since the subjects 

 discussed in that mathematical journal are 'too difficult, and 

 some of his friends advise him to make the contents of The 

 Analyst somewhat more elementary, and to give small premi- 

 ums to clubs, prizes, etc. He states, however, that the pub- 

 lication was inaugurated, not with the hope of being able to 

 make it popular at present, but for the purpose of affording 

 a medium for the interchange of thought by students and 

 teachers of mathematics. Hence he does not anticipate that 

 any person will subscribe who will not derive from it knowl- 

 edge to the extent of its cost ; and that The Analyst will 

 continue to be a medium for interchange of thought, but 

 will not become to any great extent purely an educational 

 journal. The great good that will result to the progress of 

 mathematical studies in this country by the presence among 

 us of a good mathematical journal is sufficient to justify 

 Mr. Hendricks in his self-imposed labors and expensive un- 

 dertaking. 



American mathematicians have contributed two valuable 

 papers to the theory of the movements of systems of planets, 

 etc. Of these, the first, by Newcomb, on the "General Inte- 

 grals of Planetary Motion," was published by the Smithsonian 

 Institution ; the second, by Hill, on the " Develoj3rnent of the 

 Perturbative Function," is to be found in The Analyst. 



The theoretical researches of Le Verrier into the movements 



