in sifting facts and freedom from all exaggerations in announcing 

 results. 



Judge Holmes observed that, in respect of our knowledge of 

 man, it was undoubtedly true that as archaeological and philolo- 

 gical researches had carried us far beyond the bounds of critical 

 history, so geology carries us back far beyond the scope of eth- 

 nology proper as an account of existing races, and takes us into 

 the sphere of Anthropology as a branch of purely zoological sci- 

 ence. Zoology, he thought, was certainly one of the most meta- 

 physical of the sciences, even if mathematics be more metaphy- 

 sical. He was inclined to regard mathematics (in its scientific 

 rather than in its practical aspect and in its highest reaches) as a 

 science of universal dynamics, statics, and equilibrium, if not of 

 pure reason or the laws of thought taken universally. When 

 free force takes on fixity, or is fixed, in the atom (a thing con- 

 ceivable, if not yet experimentally proved), and so becomes 

 (as it were) '••stored force," then the sphere of fixed fate, chance, 

 mechanical laws and powers, and "the properties of matter," be- 

 gins ; and when science comes to reach beyond these properties of 

 dead substratum and what it calls "physical laws" into the region 

 of the total free force, pure reason, and ultimate causation, and so 

 arrives at the end of that chain of causes which Bacon and the 

 ancients said was tied to the foot of Jupiter's throne, then it is 

 probable that science itself will become something like metaphy- 

 sical science, and scientists and speculative philosophers will stand 

 near together on the same platform, and perhaps the theologians 

 themselves not be excluded. 



Mr. W.J. Lee of Iron Ridge, Mo., was elected a correspond- 

 ing member, and Messrs. John A. Scholten, Edward P. Curtis, 

 and David Hushes, were elected associate members. 



February 17, 1873. 

 Vice-President Dr. Engelmann in the chair. 



Twelve members present. 



The Corresponding Secretary read a letter from Mr. W.J. Lee 

 of Iron Ridge, Mo., acknowledging his election as a correspond- 

 ing member. 



