SKETCH OF M. CHEVREUL. 551 



year of his membership. The fiftieth year would not strictly have 

 occurred till 1876 ; but it was generally understood that he would 

 have been elected in 1816, had he not urged the Academy to give the 

 vacant place to M. Proust, who was old and infirm, and could not 

 afford to wait. M. Dumas, the Permanent Secretary of the Academy, 

 in a " gracefully-worded speech," recounted the many valuable serv- 

 ices rendered by M. Chevreul, " the dean of French students," as he 

 was modestly accustomed to style himself, and at the same time bore 

 warm testimony to the personal character of the man. M. Elie de 

 Beaumont, who had been a pupil of M. Chevreul, added a few words 

 of veneration and respect for his old master, after which the latter, 

 attempting to respond, could only express his inability to do so. In 

 1873 the Albert gold medal was awarded him by the English Society 

 of Arts, for his valuable researches in connection with saponification, 

 dyeing, agriculture, and natural history. In November, 1876, he was 

 entertained at dinner by eighty savants in celebration of the fiftieth 

 anniversary of his professorship and membership of the Academy of 

 Sciences. The American Association for the Advancement of Science, 

 at its Boston meeting in 1880, sent him a congratulatory telegram on 

 his reaching his ninety-fifth year, and expressed the hope that he 

 might be spared to continue his labors until the end of his century, 

 which only a few months are lacking to see fulfilled. In the same 

 year, he completed the fiftieth course of his lectures at the Museum, 

 on the application of chemistry to organized bodies. Each course 

 consisted of forty lectures, so that the fifty courses included in all two 

 thousand lectures. 



According to "Nature,'* M. ChevreuPs first important work was 

 published in 1806. Among his other works than those we have al- 

 ready named, are one on organic analysis and its applications (1824) ; 

 " Theorie des effets optiques que presentent les etoffes de soie " 

 (" Theory of the Optical Effects presented by Silken Cloths," 1848) ; 

 "De la baguette divinatoire, du pendule, et des tables tournantes" 

 (" Of the Divining-Rod, the Pendulum, and Turning-Tables," 1854) ; 

 "The History of Chemical Science," of which the first volume was 

 published in 1866; "Memoirs of the Academy," completed in 1872, 

 " a most interesting work, which throws light on many of the most 

 scientific questions of the day " ; and numerous papers, articles in 

 encyclopaedias, and books of less general interest than those men- 

 tioned. A curious illustration of his vigor and activity, lasting into 

 extreme old age, is afforded by a communication which he made to 

 the Academy of Sciences on the 4th of February, 1884, which was on 

 the varying color-effects produced by the glare of a conflagration play- 

 ing upon a gas-light that stood in front of the Museum, which he ob- 

 served for an hour. Delicate work that for the eyes of a man ninety- 

 eight years old ! That vigor still continued till the beginning of the 

 present year, when M. Chevreul presided at the meeting of the new 



