164 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



ties, stood prominent among the rising generation of scientific men 

 in America. 



" Resolved, That the Academy will cheerfully undertake to print 

 in its Memoirs whatsoever papers he may have left in a condition 

 fit for publication. 



" Resolved, That the American Academy tenders to the family of 

 Dr. Burnett its sincere sympathies for their irreparable loss. 



" Resolved, That a copy of these resolutions be sent to the family 

 of Dr. Burnett, and printed in the public papers." 



These resolutions were seconded by Dr. S. L. Abbot, and 

 unanimously adopted. 



Professor J. Lovering then rose, and said : — 



" May I call the attention of the Academy to another loss it has 

 sustained in the recent and sudden death of Macedoine Melloni, the 

 news of which arrived in this country almost contemporaneously with 

 the report of a new paper which he had presented to the French 

 Academy. In the preface to his great work, La Thermochrose, Mel- 

 loni confesses the great admiration w^hich he had felt for nature from 

 his youth : ' Mais rien ne frappait autant mon imagination que le lieu 

 si intime qui reunit les phenomenes de la vie a I'astre brillant du jour.' 

 He began to teach Physics as soon as he left the school-bench, and 

 continued at that employment for seven years, from 1824 to 1831, 

 when the courses of the University of Parma were discontinued. 

 Here he came into valuable contact with Nobili, whose thermo-multi- 

 plier he adopted and perfected with the assistance of the skilful artist 

 of Paris, Ruhmkorff". Political troubles banished Melloni from Italy, 

 but he found an asylum in France, and a kind friend in Arago. He 

 accepted a Professorship in the Department of the Jura, and after- 

 wards went to Geneva for six months. In 1837 Arago prevailed with 

 Metternich to obtain permission for the return of the exile to his home, 

 and in 1839 Melloni was appointed Director of the Cabinet of Arts 

 and Trades at Naples. 



" Melloni's discoveries in Radiant Heat began with his first memoir 

 presented to the French Academy, in 1833. This was followed in 

 long succession by others in French and Italian to the day of his death, 

 or for a period of more than twenty years. The fruits of Melloni's 

 labors were systematically embodied in his great work, entitled La 

 Thermochrosey ou la Coloration Calorifique, the first volume of which 



