864. 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



a spider had entered the case through a 

 screw-hole and spun a web in such a man- 

 ner as to prevent the free use of the fans. 



NOTES. 



We published in the Monthly for June, 

 1886, a sketch, by Prof. David Starr Jor- 

 dan, of the eminent early American natural- 

 ist C. S. Rafinesque, for which we were not 

 able at the time to secure an authenticated 

 poi'trait. We have since found such a por- 

 trait, which was published several years ago 

 in Potter's American Monthly, and now have 

 the privilege, by permission of Messrs. Pot- 

 ter & Co., of presenting it to our readers, as 

 a supplement to Prof. Jordan's delightful 

 sketch. It comes in opportunely at this 

 time to supply the lack of the portraits of 

 the Bartrams, of neither of whom have we 

 been able to find an authenticated likeness. 

 As the object most closely associated with 

 the Bartrams, we give in connection with 

 the sketch of them a view of the house built 

 by the elder Bartram, as it appeared in 1887, 

 from a photograph furnished us by Mr. 

 Thomas Meehan. 



A NEW star, not marked on any map, 

 was observed February 1st in the constella- 

 tion Auriga, slightly in advance of the star 

 26 of that constellation, and of about the 

 same, or the sixth magnitude. It is described 

 as yellowish, and somewhat fuzzy in appear- 

 ance. 



OBITUARY NOTES. 

 Dr. Thomas Sterry Hunt, a distinguished 

 American geologist and chemist, died at the 

 Park Avenue Hotel, in this city, February 

 11th, of mitral disease of the heart, in the 

 sixty-sixth year of his age. A sketch of his 

 life and scientific activity, and a portrait, 

 were given in the Monthly for February, 

 1876. He retired from public professional 

 life in 1878, but had made since then many 

 important contributions to theoretical chem- 

 istry and geology. One of the organizers of 

 the International Geological Congress, he 

 was its first secretary, and was a vice-presi- 

 dent at the meetings in Padua, 1878; Bo- 

 logna, 1881; and London, 1888. He was a 

 member of the International Juries at the 

 Centennial Exhibition in 1876. Dr. Hunt 

 had been in feeble health for many months 

 previous to his death. 



Sir George Biddell Airy, English As- 

 tronomer Royal from 1836 till 1881, died 

 on January 2d, after a few months' illness, 

 in the ninety-first year of his age. A sketch 

 of his life and works up to that time, with a 

 portrait, were given in The Popular Science 

 Monthly for May, 1873. He after that made 

 the preparations for the equipment of the 

 British expedition for the observation of the 

 transit of Venus of 1874, a subject on which 



he had been engaged since 1836. He retired 

 from his office in the Greenwich Observatory 

 in 1881, after forty-five years of service. 



M. Emile de Lavelete, the eminent Bel- 

 gian economist and publicist, died at Liege, 

 early in January, of pneumonia, following in 

 flueuza, just after the publication of his latest 

 work. Government in Democracy. He was 

 born in Bruges in 1822, studied law in the 

 University of Ghent, and engaged in histori- 

 cal and philological labors, and aftei'ward in 

 works on political economy and kindred sci- 

 ences, which gave him a world-wide reputa- 

 tion. In 1864 he was appointed Professor 

 of Political Economy in the University of 

 Liege. His principal works were on the Rural 

 Economy of Belgium and of Holland, on 

 Property and its Primitive Forms, and Natu- 

 ral Laws and the Object of Political Economy. 

 He was the most conspicuous advocate of 

 bimetallism. 



According to the Academy, the death of 

 the Duke of Devonshire, in December, 1891, 

 was a greater loss to the learned world than 

 (directly) to politics or society. The duke 

 had been intimately associated with academi- 

 cal affairs ever since he took his degree at 

 Cambridge in 1829. "The Cavendish Lab- 

 oratory at Cambridge bears witness to his 

 munificence, while science acknowledges no 

 less gratitude to him for serving as chairman 

 of the Royal Commission on Scientific In- 

 struction and the Advancement of Science." 



Prof. John Couch Adams, the English 

 astronomer and mathematician, who shares 

 with Leverrier the honor of having pi-e- 

 dicted the place where the planet Neptune 

 would be found, has recently died. He 

 was the son of a farmer, and was born near 

 Bodmin, Cornwall, in 1818. He began his 

 investigations of the irregularities in the 

 motions of Uranus in 1841, and completed 

 them as early as Leverrier did his, but suf- 

 fered himself to be anticipated in the pub- 

 lication. In 1858 he succeeded the late 

 Dean Pcacocke as Lowndean Professor of 

 Astronomy at Cambiidge. 



The death is announced of Colonel James 

 Augustus Grant, a famous African explorer. 

 He was the sou of a Scottish clergyman and 

 was born in 1827 ; served in the war of the 

 Indian mutiny ; accompanied the Abyssinian 

 Expedition in 1868 as a member of the In- 

 telligence Department; and in 1860 to 1863, 

 with Captain Speke, explored the sources of 

 the Nile and discovered the Victoria Ny- 

 anza. He described this expedition in the 

 Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 

 and its botany in those of the Linna:an So- 

 ciety ; and published in 1874 a supplement- 

 ary account of the expedition, of which a 

 joint account by the two explorers had al- 

 ready appeared. It was entitled A Walk 

 across Africa. He received medals from 

 the Royal Geographical Society, the Pope, 

 and King Victor Emanuel. 



