244 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



" Voted, That the committee to be appointed in pursuance of the 

 foregoing resolutions consist of the gentlemen who reported them ; 

 viz. Messrs. Guyot, Agassiz, Peirce, Levering, and B. A. Gould, Jr." 



Professor Agassiz made an oral communication of considera- 

 ble length upon the classification and homologies of radiated 

 animals. 



Professor Levering read a part of a letter from Captain 

 Lefroy, of the Toronto Observatory, to Mr. W. C. Bond, rep- 

 resenting that there is danger that the magnetic observations 

 at that place may be discontinued after next March, and ex- 

 pressing a desire that the Academy would use its influence in 

 promoting their continuance for a further period of three 

 years. He then offered the following resolutions, which, after 

 some remarks by Mr. Guyot in their support, were adopted : — 



" 1. That, in the opinion of this Academy, it is highly desirable that 

 the magnetical and meteorological observatory at Toronto should be 

 sustained for another period of three years. 



"2. That a committee be appointed to correspond with the Ameri- 

 can Minister at London, or with the Royal Society, as they may think 

 best, with the view of urging upon the British government the scien- 

 tific importance of prolonging their magnetical and meteorological 

 operations in British America, and thus cooperating with similar ob- 

 servations to be made more or less extensively at different stations in 

 the United States." 



Hon. Edward Everett, Mr. W. C. Bond, Mr. Gtiyot, Pro- 

 fessor Lovering, and Mr. J. P. Hall, were appointed a com- 

 mittee to carry the foregoing resolutions into effect. 



Professor Lovering made some remarks upon the advantages 

 of the French system of weights and measures over all others, 

 and offered the following resolutions, which were adopted: — 



" L That the decimal system of weights and measures, based upon 

 the French metre, possesses advantages which belong to no other sys- 

 tem that has been adopted or proposed ; that it is the only existing sys- 

 tem which is symmetrical in its parts, simple in its reductions, and 

 which maintains in its various denominations that invariable and recov- 

 erable value which adapts the observations and experiments recorded 

 in it for ready and permanent use over all the world. 



