498 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



Five hundred and fifty-third Meeting. 



May 30, 1865. — Annual Meeting. 



The President in the chair. 



The Report of the Council upon the changes which had 

 occurred in the Academy during the past year was presented 

 and read by the Corresponding Secretary, as follows: — 



In our annual survey of the changes Avhich have taken place in the 

 membership of the Academy, our thoughts naturally turn in the first 

 instance to the losses which we have sustained by death. These, al- 

 though less numerous by one half than in the year preceding, are still 

 severe. 



The four names which now disappear from the roll of Resident Fel- 

 lows are those of Messrs. Bartlett and Bond of the first Class, of Everett 

 and Quincy of the third ; — two taken from us in their prime, and two 

 in the fulness of years and honors. 



Only two Associate Fellows have deceased, the astronomer Gilliss, 

 and the venerable Silliman ; and only one Foreign Honorary Member, 

 the venerable astronomer Struve. 



Taking into view the important services rendered to Astronomy by 

 Messrs. Quincy and Everett, it will be noticed that the losses of the 

 past year fall peculiarly upon that department of science. 



William Pitt Greenwood Bartlett, one of the youngest mem- 

 bers of our mathematical section, died at Cambridge on the 13th of 

 January last, just as he was entering upon a promising scientific career. 

 He was born at Boston, on the 27th of October, 1837, entered Harvard 

 University in the summer of 1854, and graduated with honors in July, 

 1858. He soon entered into the corps of computers for the American 

 Ephemeris, and was assiduously engaged in this work until his decease. 

 He contributed to Runkle's Mathematical Monthly some valuable pa- 

 pers on the elements of Quaternions, and to the Memoirs of this Acad- 

 emy a paper on Interpolation. In the Nautical Almanac Office he had 

 charge of the Time-stars and the Circumpolar Stars ; and he showed 

 great ability and industry in preparing their Ephemeris and tables. 

 The character of his work is highly eulogized by the simple statement 

 of the fact, that it was left in such condition that another computer 

 could take it up, without the loss of any of Mr. Bartlett's labor, at the 

 point where it was dropped through the sudden and fatal illness by 

 which a life of great promise was cut short. 



