SOCIETY OF PHYSICS AND NATURAL HISTORY OF GENEVA. 365 



endowed with no common facnltios, and vespmblod Fiiraday in tlic incomplete- 

 ness of his earlier studies, which both had afterwards found the means of retriev- 

 ing through special methods, in conjunction with great d(;cision of purpose. 

 Looking upon evidence as the only nninipeachahlc demonstration of tnith, Fou- 

 cault had conceived and executed the most delicate researches. His mechanical 

 dexterity was incomparable, and, had he lived longer, would have been raado 

 available for the solution of many other problems. He was a wann friend, an 

 ingenious and penetrating spirit, a clear and accurate writer. He leaves in the 

 history of physics profound traces whi(;h will preserve his name from oblivion. 

 He was received into our soi-iety in 1859. 



Dr. Charles Daubeney, recently deceased in England at the age of 73 years, 

 has been a colleague of ours since 1830. He had pursued at Geneva, under 

 Pp'ame de Candolle, his studies in botany, a science of which he was subse- 

 quently a professor in the University of Oxford. We are indebted to him for a 

 great number of researches in different departments of the natural sciences. In 

 our city he had made many friends, to whom he has always remained greatly 

 attached. 



After this tribute paid to the memory of savants who are no m(n-e, we may 

 congratulate ourselves on having inscribed ujion our list the name of j\I. Claude 

 Bernard, the distinguished French physiologist. None among us but remem- 

 bers the interesting communication on the curare, and on poisons in general, 

 which he presented, in 1865, to the Helvetic Society of Natural Sciences, assem- 

 bled within om* walls. 



§ 1. — ASTRONOMY. 



Has the moon, our nearest neighbor in the immensity of the heavens, aiTivcd 

 at a definitive state, or can we still discover some changes on its surface 1 This 

 question, so important for cosmology, has been almost universally answered in 

 tlie negative. Professor Gautier recounted to us (4th July) the researches made 

 at Athens, by Dr. Schmidt, on the transformations undergone by the crater Lin- 

 naeus, in the Marc Screnitatis. Affirmed by ditferent observers, for instance by 

 M. Kespighi, at Bologna, these modifications have been called in doubt by other 

 savants. Thus M. William Huggins maintains that the appearance of the Liu- 

 ngeus is exactly that which Schroter has figured in plate IX. of his Sdenotppo- 

 graphischc Fragmentc. This divergency of views gives interest to the observa- 

 tions reported to us by M. Thury, (1st August,) and which he made by means 

 of an excellent refractor, mounted at the atelier of Plainpalais, with an objective, 

 furnished by Mertz, of four and a half inches opening. Our colleague thinks 

 that the crater has become filled with a substance of a whiteness like that of 

 ceruse, so that its configuration differs from that represented by Miidler iu his 

 celebrated chart. (See Archiccs dcs Sciences, Physiques, ct NaturcUcs, t. xxx, 

 p. 292.) 



M. Gautier hag continued, as in former years, to communicate to us the unin- 

 terrupted ])rogress of the noble science to which he has devoted himself". Ho 

 announced the arrival at Labrador of two thermometers, which he had sent to 

 the Moravian missionaries through the medium of our countryman, M. J. L. 

 Miclieli. Tliese instruments will Ijo used for a regular study ofxhe temiieraturo 

 of those glacial regions. He gave us an account of the researches of Dr. W. 

 Schur on the orbit of the double star ;;, in Opliiuchus, from which we are author- 

 ized to estimate at about 91 years the jieriud of the revolution of the smaller 

 star around the larger. By ado{)ting the value of the annual ])aiallax of this 

 group obtained at Bonn, by Dr. Kriiger, the nuituul distance of the two stars 

 would appear to be about 30 times the distance from tlie earth to the sun, 

 the mass of the group to be triple that of the sun, and its light to occupy 20 

 years iu reaching us. Ho brought to our notice the observations of Dr. Auwers, 



