260 French National Institute. 



Since its last public sitting, the class has published the 

 first volume of memoirs, presented to it by learned foreign- 

 ers, and vol. vi. of its own memoirs. The subsequent 

 volumes v. ill be published every six months^ commencing 

 •with the month of July next. The class has also published 

 the first volume of The Meridian of Dunkirk, being the basis 

 of the metric-decimal system: this work will contain all the 

 observations, all the methods of calculation, which have 

 fixed the two fundamental unities of the metrical system, 

 the metre and the kilogramme. 



Several members have published new works, and new 

 editions of works already known, in which we find impor- 

 tant additions. Thus M. Legendre has published a sixth 

 edition of his Geometry, and M. Lacroix a second edition 

 of his Traite Elementaire du Calcul DifFerentiel et Integral. — 

 Astronomers have now Tables of the Sun, in which, for the 

 first time, the attractions of all the planets are taken into 

 account. 



Lastlv, M. Lagrange has given a more complete edition 

 of the Calcul des Fonctions, a truly classical work, which it 

 would be superfluous to mention here to such geometricians 

 as have considered the whole of it, and difficult to give in a 

 few words a sufficient idea of jt to those who have not. The 

 same reasons compel us to pass rapidly over a dissertation 

 lately published by M. Laplace as a supplement to the 

 tenth book of the Mecanique celeste, and in which he gives 

 a complete theory of capillary action. For the first time 

 we see these phaenomena so contrary in appeaiance happily 

 referred to one law ; the ascension and depression between 

 two planes explained by the same analysis which accounts 

 for analogous phaenomena, which are remarked in tubes ; 

 the numerical results of the theory perfectly identical with 

 those of the observations, perhaps still more exact than 

 "Messrs. Haiiy and Tremery have made expresslv in order 

 to submit the new theory to the most rigorous trial. 



Let no one imagine that these delicate researches have 

 no othfr merit than that of difficulty overcome, every 

 thing holds in the phvsical sciences as in nature herself j 

 there is no phcenomenon which, whexi explained, does not 



throw 



