424 PRIZE QUESTIONS OF SCIEXTIFIC SOCIETIES. 



8. There still remains some uncertainty as to the manner in which 

 the alg;e (popularly known as sea-weeds) reproduce their species. 

 The society desires that new researches be made upon this subject, 

 and that the development from the embryo to the perfect plant, of 

 three species at least, belonging to widely differing families of these 

 plants, be obseryed, described, and, if necessary, illustrated by 

 figures. 



9. What are the characteristics, dcducible from fossils or other 

 circumstances, which enable us to decide with certainty whether allu- 

 vial strata have been deposited in fresh water, in water more or less 

 brackish, or in the sea? 



The society desires that the truth of these characteristics should 

 be confirmed by the examination of different beds of alluvial deposit 

 of the origin of which there is no doubt. 



10. What conclusion can be drawn, from the geological constitution 

 of the land, as to the extent, &c., of the old embouchure of the Rhine, 

 near Katwijk, such as it existed before it was closed; whether by a vio- 

 lent cataclysm or by progressive encroachments of the land? What 

 are the evident vestiges that this embouchure has left? 



11. All that is known about the fossils of the Dutch East Indian 

 archipelago is limited to a few plants of the island of Java, which 

 have been examined and described by Professor Goppert, of Breslau; 

 and to the tertiary molluscs of that island, which have been deposited 

 in the Dutch Royal Museum at Leyden. The island of Java is the 

 only one of that archipelago of which the geological formation is some- 

 what known. 



The society desires that similar researches be extended to another 

 of the populated islands of that archipelago, and that the organic 

 remains, especially those of the oldest strata that are to be found 

 there, be examined and described, so that the geological period of the 

 formation of that island may be determined. 



The society would be well pleased to receive the fossils of the strata 

 of that island, not merely for the sake of the augmentation of its col- 

 lection, but also for the sake of comparing thorn with the accompa- 

 nying descriptions and figures. It will award to the author such 

 a sum as will be in proportion to the importance of his memoir and its 

 accompaniments, a sum which, indeed, it would not hesitate to pay 

 for a collection of those fossils, unaccompanied by either descrip- 

 tion or figures. 



The society has this year proposed the following questions, and 

 requests the answers to them before the 1st of January, 1857: 



1. According to the researches published in 1848 by the Ameri- 

 can astronomer. Professor Peirce, the movement observed in the planet 

 Uranus would be perfectly explained by the intervention of the planet 

 Neptune, if we suppose the latter to have a mass of yoo-oth that of 

 the sun, while the perturbation observed in the movement of Uranus, 

 which led to the discovery of Neptune, could not be completely 

 attributed to the sole action of the latter, unless it have TTi^th of 

 the mass of the sun, as appears to result from the labors of 0. Struve. 



