OF ARTS AND SCIENCES: MARCH 11, 1873. 515 



crystals being preserved and extended under the pressure. In ice this 

 preservation of surface may be aided by the thin film of air which occu- 

 pies the minute fissures occasioned by the shrinking of the ice. This 

 may perhaps influence regelation, and serve to keep the columns thus 

 honeycombed from amalgamating. 



The rays of the sun falling upon and penetrating this ice are at each 

 interior surface more or less arrested and converted into dark heat, like 

 the heat received from the sun by the earth, and returned to the air in 

 contact with and near the surface, and convert the ice along the planes 

 of separation to water. 



The repetition of this process at length so far separates the columns 

 from each other that a slight strain disengages them, and the columns 

 fall asunder, if in water to rapidly disappear in solution.* 



&^j 



Six hundred and fifty-fifth Sleeting. 



March 11, 1873. — Adjourned Stated Meeting. 



The President in the chair. 



The President announced the death of Hon. James Savage 

 a Resident Fellow ; also that of Professor John Torrey, of New 

 York, an Associate Fellow. 



The verbal changes in Chapter IX., Section 3, of the Statutes, 

 having for their object to make it conform as nearly as possible 

 to Section 2, as amended, were referred to the President and 

 Recording Secretary. 



A paper on the " General Equation," by G. W. Pierce, was 

 referred to the Recording Secretary. 



Professor H. P. Bowditch moved that a committee of five be 

 appointed to consider the propriety of seeking to obtain legisla- 

 tion providing better methods of procuring expert testimony in 



* General Totten, in the paper above referred to, suggests that the columnar 

 structure is determined in the original formation of the ice by vertical prisms shot 

 down from above, which increase by lateral accretion till they drive all the air in 

 solution in the water into thin vertical films, marking the boundaries of the crystals. 

 This suggestion may be entitled to higher consideration than my observations lead 

 me to attach to it. It does not seem at all to meet the case of ice made up of snow- 

 flakes. The cavities or threads or filaments in ice are, moreover, as I have demon- 

 strated, vacua, and not spaces filled with air. 



