REPORT 0\ THE TRANSACTIONS OF THE SOCIETY OF PHYSICS AND NATURAL 

 HISTORY, OF GENEVA, FROM JUNE, IStO, TO JUNE, ISIl. 



By ai. IIenki de Sausscke, President. 



[Trauslatcd for the Siuitlisouian lustitntiou.] 



The year which has just passed has been marked by events which 

 have left but little time for the peaceful occupations of science. The 

 war burst upon us almost at the moment that our scientific year com- 

 menced, and we can hardly yet say that it has terminated. If Switzer- 

 land has not been oppressed by belligerent armies, she has, neverthe- 

 less, been obliged to play an active part in the duties which her 

 neutrality imposes upon her, and there are few present who during 

 this sad period have not been in one way or another diverted from their 

 regular occupations. Several members of the soi»'.iety have not hesitated 

 to make the sacrifice of their precious time to works of charity which 

 the evils of war have rendered every day more indispensable ; in fact 

 no one has been able to escape the preoccupations occasioned by the 

 important events which have transpired in a neighboring theater of our 

 frontier. / 



On this account the convocation of the scientific congress, announced 

 for the second half of the year 1870, has been countermanded. The 

 Helvetic Society of Natural Sciences, convoked at Fraueufeld for tlie 

 month of August, has not been able to assemble, and a geological con- 

 gress, organized at Geneva under tlie superintendence of MM. Favre, 

 father and son, and of M. F. J. Pictet de la .Rive, has been obliged to 

 be postponed to some other time. We can therefore scarcely be sur- 

 prised that our society should itself be somewhat affected by the exte- 

 rior agitations, and that the meetings should have been less frequented 

 than in ordinary times. 



If, however, the catastrophes to which I have alluded, have some- 

 what diminished the activity of our members, they have procured us, 

 by a kind of compensation, the inappreciable advantage of having seated 

 among us a number of foreign savants, who, exiled from their homes 

 through the vicissitudes of war, have found in the shelter of our neu- 

 trality a refuge both peaceful and hospitable. In attending our meet- 

 ings, and in favoring us with their communications, they have cast upon 

 our reunions a luster of which our records will preserve the remembrance. 

 These savants were M. M. Regnault, of the Institute, and M. P. Cap, of 

 the Academy of Medicine at Paris ; M. le Professor Fee, of Strasburg ; 



