PROCEEDINGS. 



A^ril $tk, 1886. 



President Nipher in the chair ; fourteen members present. 



Dr. Todd I'emarked, that, in dissecting the body of a negro, he 

 had found a muscle in the fore-arm which had been thought to be 

 extinct in the human species and something to indicate a rever- 

 sion of type, ilkistrating his remarks by means of preparations 

 made from a monkey. 



Mr. Tivy exhibited specimens of real and bogus butter, and 

 showed how it was possible to distinguish between them in the 

 microscope, by the ditl^erence in the forms of their crystallization. 



April i<^tk, t886. 



President Nipher in the chair ; eleven members present. 

 Prof. Pritchett made some remarks concerning a comet, re- 

 cently discovered by Mr. Barnard, of Nashville, and another dis- 

 covered by Mr. Fabry, of Paris, now visible in the telescope, and 

 suggested the possibility of their being the second appearances of 

 the comets of 17S4 and 1785? which idea was suggested to him 

 by the similarity of the elements of their orbits. Mr. Pritchett 

 also remarked that in observing, recently, one of the satellites of 

 Jupiter, when projected against the planet's disk, he was particu- 

 larly impressed with the variation in the brightness of the satel- 

 lite's disk, appearing at times as a dark spot upon the surface of 

 the planet and then changing so as to be quite invisible. As it 

 was commonly supposed by astronomers that this change of 

 brightness was due to the difference in the phases in the satel- 

 lites. Prof. Pritchett thought it would be possible to determine 

 from these changes the time of the satellite's rotation. 



v. — I- 



