204 GENEVA SOCIETY OF PHYSICS AND NATURAL HISTORY. 



abreast with every disease in which the alimentation is not in a normal 

 condition. It reaches its natural limit sometimes sooner and sometimes 

 later than the disease it silently accompanies, and may then become the 

 principal disease in instances where it was at first but symptomatic. It 

 might be recognized by the degree of the destruction of the muscular 

 fibers, and its actual importance measured each moment by the relative 

 weight of the body." 



Constantly occupied with the task of verifying and completing his 

 researches, Chossat undertook the study of osteomalacy by saline inani- 

 tiation, when in 1842 he was invited to constitute one of the board of pub- 

 lic instruction. Carrying into these new functions all the zeal and perse- 

 verance which characterized him, he was obliged to abandon his original 

 scientific researches. Appointed in 1845 member of a commission 

 charged by the department of public instruction to organize a system of 

 instruction for the industrial and commercial classes of the canton of 

 Geneva, he drew up, as reporter, a detailed memoir, the conclusions of 

 which, logically deduced, were applied at a later date. 



In 1848, the board of public instruction was dissolved, and Chossat 

 retired again into private life, but the time he was obliged to devote to 

 a large ijractice, and the fatigue attending it, forced him reluctantly 

 to renounce his original labors, which he felt, he said, that he had no 

 longer the time and strength to continue in a regular manner. Although 

 he gave up writing, he still continued to occupy himself with the most 

 varied scientific and literary subjects. The taste for reading, which he 

 indulged, finally became a veritable passion, and even in the last years 

 of his life he kept himself informed of all the principal scientific discov- 

 eries, not, however, neglecting for this the ancient writers, especially 

 Plato, ui)on whom he loved to meditate. 



Attacked by an organic disease of the stomach, which made rapid pro- 

 gress in a body worn out by intellectual and physical labors, Chossat 

 awaited his end with resignation, i^reserving his faculties to the last 

 moment sufficiently to be able to announce, himself, to his family, some 

 hours before dying, the precise moment of his death. This distinguished 

 scientist died March 7, 1875, in the seventy-ninth year of his age. 



The society had to award this year the prize founded by A. P. De Can- 

 dolle. The prize was adjudged to Professor Eadlhofer, of Munich, for 

 a monograph on the Sapindaceous family'. 



The second part of volume xxiii of the memoirs of our society ap- 

 peared during the course of last autumn; the first part of volume xxiv 

 is now in press, and includes the second part of the memoir of Messrs. 

 do Loriol and Pellat. 



The Geological Society of France having communicated its desire to 

 meet in Geneva in 1875, to hold there a ijortion of its annual session, 

 the society appointed a committee, composed of MM. Alphonse and 



