164 TRANSACTIONS OF THE SOCIETY OF PHYSICS AND 



into a temporary cemetery ; so that when the Swiss federal government 

 gave permission to the old men, the women, and children to leave, 

 he gladly availed himself of it, and he arrived in Geneva, greatly 

 impaired in health in spite of a remarkably robust constitution. He 

 was, moreover, much distressed in mind, for he belonged to an old 

 French family, in whom sentiments of patriotism were very strongly 

 implanted. In regard to his personal interests, which were much com- 

 promised, he manifested much more resignation than for the disasters 

 of his country. We had the pleasure of seeing him sometimes at our 

 sessions. Afterward when he had secured his pension as professor 

 and military pharmaceutist of the first class, he went to Paris, and 

 settled near a portion of his family. The botanical society of France 

 nominated him president, but death found him in the midst of his books 

 of botany and literature. 



F6e commenced his career as pharmaceutist, attached to the French 

 army in Spain during the great war. We may imagine that he was 

 subjected to great hardships; but he was young, vigorous, well in- 

 structed, and, amid all the distractions of war, of marches and counter- 

 marches, he never neglected an opportunity of botauising, and also 

 of making himself master of the beautiful language of Spain, which he 

 cultivated to the end of his days. A small volume published by him 

 gives an agreeable account of this campaign, and was completed by 

 another containing the dcvscription of a journey, taken fifty years later 

 over the grounds of his former adventures. 



Several of the articles of M. Fee upon literary or moral subjects or 

 upon popular botany are remarkably correct in style, and we have 

 always been impressed with the purity of his diction. 



Jacques- AdolpheLambert Quetelet, director of the Royal Observatory 

 of Brussels, perpetual secretary of the Academy of Science, Letters, and 

 Artof Belgium, hasfurnished an esampleof ascientificcareerremarkably 

 long, active, and varied. Born at Ghent, on the 22d of February, 179G, he 

 taught mathematics in the college of that city, at the early age of eighteen 

 years. Becoming, five years later, professor at the Atheiiseum of Brussels, 

 he continued to labor and publish the results of his efibrts in the domain 

 of mathematical and i)hysical science or of statistics, until he was seventy- 

 eight years of age. He died on the 17th of February, 1874. Never was 

 there a correspondent more scrui)ulous in replying to the communica- 

 tions made to him, and his liberality in the exchange of publications 

 has been often noticed, both in our society and elsewhere. 



Quetelet published the Eleinents Gastronomic (2 vol. in 18mo, second edi- 

 tion, 1848,) a volume, 8ur laphysiqne du globe, (in 4°, 18GI,) several articles 

 upon i)robabilities, and the journal entitled Correspondence maihematique 

 et physique, (11 vols, in 8°, 1825-'39.) He made at the observatory at 

 Brussels a series of very important observations u[)on the temperature of 

 the ground at different depths, and has given us the results of meteoro- 

 logical observations made with great care. He was one of the first to 



