CHEVREUL AT A HUNDRED. 33 



<(t all, the exposure proving insufficient to bring it out. Of course, this 

 makes it extremely probable that what looks like the corona upon 

 plates exposed to the uneclipsed sun is merely a fallacious ghost, due, 

 as his opponents have always claimed, to something in his apparatus 

 or process, or else to the scattered light in our atmosphere. 



It is true, as Mr. Common points out, that the air was by no means 

 satisfactorily clear during the eclipse, and the result, therefore, is not 

 absolutely conclusive; but it must be conceded, and Mr. Huggins him- 

 self admits it, that the probability is now heavily against him. 



Captain Darwin obtained good pictures of the corona w T ith ordi- 

 nary plates exposed for a longer time in the usual apparatus. 



October 1, 1886. 



CHEYREUL AT A HUNDRED. 



By WILLIAM H. LAEEABEE. 



THE occasion of M. Chevreul's completing the one hundredth year 

 of his age was celebrated in Paris on the 30th and 31st of August, 

 with appropriate observances and honors. The festivities were begun 

 in the National Society of Agriculture, whose custom it has been 

 to elect M. Chevreul its president every other year. A committee of 

 this society had been formed in April, under the presidency of M. 

 Charles Brongniart, and had collected the sum of fifteen thousand 

 francs for the purpose of striking a commemorative medal for the 

 centenary. Addresses were delivered by Deputy Louis Passy, and, in 

 presenting the medal, by M. Brongniart, who assured M. Chevreul 

 that he was the object of the respect and admiration of all civilized 

 nations. M. Chevreul replied ; " All that I have heard causes me much 

 embarrassment. And why ? On account of the warmth of the pro- 

 found and numerous sentiments which you have expressed. I never 

 anticipated the honor that my comrades have paid me." 



In the Academy of Sciences, whose regular meeting took place on 

 the 30th, M. Blanchard, in the absence from Paris of President Ad- 

 miral Jurien de la Graviere, took the chair and made the Academy's 

 address. He remarked upon the session's occurring on that day, as if 

 the hour had been chosen for the event, saying that " in the family 

 it is on the eve of the marked day that the festival is given : was it 

 not fitting that it should be the same in the Academy, our intellectual 

 family, which we love more and more as we grow older ? " He re- 

 ferred to the fact that he had, as President of the Academy, pre- 

 dicted this very event three years before, when M. Chevreul was 

 entering upon his ninety-eighth year. Then, having made a general 

 mention of the value of M. Chevreul's discoveries, he said : " The inves- 

 tigator, absorbed in his mission, dreams of nothing but of extending 

 its domain. If he succeeds in unveiling facts of considerable inter- 

 VOL. xxx. — 3 



