Emerson.] {^IS [November. 



from the Natural History Society at Moscow, dated Dec. 15- 

 27, the London Ethnological Society, dated March 20, the 

 National Museum of Antiquaries at Edinburgh, dated April 

 13, and the Smithsonian Institution, dated Washington, May 

 9, and June 28, 1861. 



Donations for the Library were received from the Smith- 

 sonian Institution, the Franklin Institute, the Protestant 

 Episcopal Church of Pennsylvania, Dr. Tafel, Professor 

 Tafel, of St. Louis, Mr. Lea, Mr. Foulke, and Dr. Emerson. 



Copies of the paper book were laid upon the table by Mr. 

 Price. 



The death of M. Von Abrahamson, of Copenhagen, Janu- 

 ary 6, 1849, was announced. 



Dr. Emerson called the attention of the members to the 

 importance of phosphoric acid in agriculture. 



The agency exercised by phosphoric acid upon growing plants has 

 been one of the most important results of the investigations of men 

 of science, who have devoted their attention to organic chemistry 

 and its bearings upon agriculture. Baron Liebig has thrown out 

 the most interesting information upon the subject, and EUe de Beau- 

 mont has made a rich communication to the National Institute of 

 France, upon the agricultural value of phosphoric acid. He regards 

 this as the main element imparting fertihty to soils, and its with- 

 drawal from these in the products of agriculture, and subsequent 

 concretion into the bones of animals, as the cause of sterility. He 

 refers to countries once abundant in cereal products and teeming in 

 population, such as Sicily and Syria, as owing their present desolation 

 to the abstraction of phosphoric acid by the products of the surfiice 

 soil, which acid subsequently enters into the bony frames of animals. 

 The bones of man are buried deep under ground, beyond the reach of 

 growing plants, whilst those of the inferior animals are scattered far 

 away from the places where they were formed. He even makes a cal- 

 culation of the number of tons of phosphoric acid removed from the 

 soil of France, since the period when its lands were wrested from the 

 rude Celts, and subjected to civilization and culture. The grand 

 result which he arrives at is, that the amount is not less than two 

 millions of tons of phosphate of lime, drawn from the soil in its sur- 

 fiice products, aud concreted into human bones. 



The revelations of science in the laboratory have been well tested 



