318 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



Six Hundred and fortieth Meeting. 



January 31, 1872. — Stated Meeting. 



The President in the chair. 



Professor N. S. Shaler called the attention of the Academy 

 to the want of suitable rooms for their library and meetings, 

 and suggested that better accommodations might be obtained 

 in the building of the Boston Society of Natural History. 



A Committee consisting of Messrs. Edmund Quincy, J. I. 

 Bowditch, and N. S. Shaler, was appointed to consider this 

 matter. 



The following gentlemen were elected into the Academy : — 



Charles A. Dunbar, of Cambridge, to be a Resident Fellow 

 in Class III., Section 3. 



William A. Rogers, of Cambridge, to be a Resident Fellow in 

 Class I., Section 2. 



Professor Crafts made some remarks on a new reaction, 

 involving phosphorus, iodine, and the organic radical ethyl, 

 in which the ethyl, contrary to the ideas held hitherto by most 

 chemists, shows a stronger affinity for the phosphorus than 

 does the iodine, setting the latter free and combining with the 

 former to give a compound, from which the oxide of triethyl- 

 phosphine can easily be obtained. 



This result, which was realized by Mr. Emmerton in the 

 laboratory of the Institute of Technology, was foreseen in a 

 paper published in the " Journ. Chem. Soc." in 1871, by 

 Messrs. Crafts and Silva. 



Dr. Charles Pickering suggested that the story of Orpheus 

 moving the rocks by his music might have originated from the 

 method in which the Egyptians moved their immense masses 

 of stone. Although some of them were ninety feet long and 

 fourteen feet square, they were drawn by men, one of whom 

 regulated the motions of the rest by standing on top and 

 clapping his hands. 



Professor Joseph Lovering made the following communica- 

 tion : — 



On the 5th of October, 1793, the National Convention of France 



