Animal Report of tJic Council. xxxiii 



undreamt-of value. His researches on spectrum analysis have 

 given to the world a new heaven and a new earth, for they have 

 enabled us to ascertain the chemic-al composition of the sun and 

 the far distant fixed stars, whilst they show us secrets of the 

 earth's crust which have iiitherto been hidden from our sight. 



One line of investigation which iJunsen pursued with 

 great success has a special interest for the members of this 

 Society ; it is that of the laws of the absorption of gases 

 by liquids. Early in the century this subject attracted the 

 special attention of John Dalton, who, first alone, and then 

 in collaboration with Wm. Henry, enunciated the laws which 

 express the relation between the quantity of gas absorbed and 

 the pressure under which that absorption takes place. Bunsen, 

 using the delicate and much more accurate methods of modern 

 research, extended these early experiments of the Manchester 

 chemists. He ascertained the limits within which Dalton and 

 Henry's law expressed the truth. He showed that within certain 

 limits and with certain gases and liquids the law holds good, and 

 he determined with great accuracy the coefficients of absorption 

 of upwards of a score of gases. 



In conclusion, it may be saiil with truth that as an investi- 

 gator Bunsen was great, that as a teacher he was greater, but 

 that he was greatest of all as a man, of whom to have been a 



friend was a privilege and an honour. 



H. E. R. 



In the death of Sir John William Dawson, K.C.M.G., 

 LL.D., F.R.S., F.G.S., this Society has lost one of its most 

 distinguished honorary members, who spent a long life of 79 

 years in working out various important geological problems, 

 and in laying the foundations in Montreal of that great insti- 

 tution, the McGill University. Born in 1820 in Picton, Nova 

 Scotia, he studied in the University of Edinburgh, and return- 

 ing home devoted himself to the study of the geology of 

 Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. These were embodied 

 in his great book, "Acadian Geology." In 1842 and ten 



