NATURAL HISTORY OF GENEVA. 105 



study atmos])lieiic waves, the knowledge of which is necessary to fore- 

 tell the weather. lie inaugurated a series of uniform observations in 

 numerous localities upon tlie times of foliation, lloweriug, and matur- 

 ing- of a great number of vegetables, and in general upon the periodi- 

 cal phenomena of vegetable or animal life. The study of mathematics 

 led him to introduce the statistical method into many branches of 

 knowledge, and also to perfect this method. He diffused just ideas in 

 regard to averages, and insisted more than had yet been done upon 

 their ordinary constancy, even in social i)henomena, a constancy the 

 origin of which is easy to comprehend if we reflect upon the diversity 

 of the causes which are almost always in action, and the slight proba- 

 bility that they will change from one year to another. If Belgium has 

 published statistical documents more extended and better co ordinated 

 than those of other states, she owes this principally to the fact of hav- 

 ing had M. Quetelet for president of the commission of statistics. Until 

 the close of his life, he collected and published data upon the physical 

 and moral conditions of man, under the head of social physics. These 

 were highly appreciated by the Academy of Moral and Political Science 

 of the Institute of France, which made him first correspondent and 

 then foreign associate. M. Quetelet, furthermore, was a member of all 

 the scientific academies and societies of any importance, and, without 

 having traveled much, was known everywhere as the friend of science. 



During the year lS7;j-'74 the societ}- received, as resident member, 

 Dr. Adolphe d'Espine, and at the same time elected, as honorary mem- 

 bers, Dr. Francis Forel, of Morges, professor at the Academy of Lau- 

 sanne, (who has made some interesting communications,) and M. 

 Poggendorff. In nominating this latter well-known physicist, of an 

 advanced age, we wished to associate ourselves with the manifestation 

 made at Berlin by a great number of savans and of societies, upon the 

 occasion of the fiftieth year of the doctorate of the editor of the Annalen 

 dcr Fhysilc unci Gliemie. 



J*rof. Emile Plantamour was appointed president for the year 1874:-'75, 

 and the other officers of the society were continued, with thanks for 

 the services they had rendered. 



II. — LABORS OF THE SOCIETY. 



Astronomy. — Colonel Gautier communicated to us the result of 227 

 observations made by him upon the contour of the solar disk, by means 

 of a direct-vision spectroscope, by Hoffman, similar to that of M. 

 liespighi at Home. M. Gautier classes the phenomena into eruptions, 

 exhalations, and detached formations. The details he gives, and the 

 deductions he draws in regard to the i)robable nature of the phenomena, 

 deserve to be studied in the memoir itself, which, accompanied by two 

 plates, is published in the Archives of Physical and Natural Science, 

 for March, 1874. 



Fhysics. — Mr. Fol submitted to the society the plan of a manometer, 



