Royal Tustitute of France. 459 
Samuel, Lord Bishop of Carlise, 
Aylmer "Bourke Lambert, Esq. 
- Edward, Lord Stanley, Vice-Fresidents. 
William George Maton, M.D. 
Edward Forster, Esq. Treasurer, 
Alexander MacLeay, Esq, en 
eeretaries. ~ 
Mr. Richard Taylor, 
The Members of the Society afterwards dined together at the 
Freemasons’ Tavern, Great Queen-street, aceording to annual 
eustom, 
June 4.—A. B, Lambert, Esq. Vice- Pyecadent; in the chair. 
Read part of a Monograph of the British Roses, by Joseph 
Woods, Esq. F.L.S. 
June ]18.—W. G. Maion, M.D. Vice-President, in the chair. 
Read a part of “ Observations on the Linnean Junci growing 
in Great Britain,’ by J. E. Bicheno, Esq. F.L.S. 
Adjourned to the 5th of November. 
ROYAL INSTITUTE OF FRANCE, 
Analysis of the Labours of the Class of Mathematical and 
Physical Sciences for the Year 1815. By M. Cuvizr. 
{Continued from p. 394.] 
CHEMISTRY. 
The third volume of the Elementary Chemistry of M. Thenard 
has appeared. ‘This learned professor therein treats at full 
length, and according to the most iodern discoveries, (among 
which there are a great many for which science is indebted to 
him,) of the immediate principles of organized bodies, of the 
various productions, of their decomposition, and of their employ- 
ment in the arts. The fourth volume, which will conclude the 
work, is in the press, 
MINERALOGY AND GEOLOGY. 
Among the questions which the learned who are occupied 
with the theory of the earth generally agitate, there are few 
more difficult, or which have occasioned louger and more ob- 
stinate disputes, than that of the origin of basalts, a kind of rock 
which some consider as the production of ancient volcanoes, 
while others regard them as deposited in the general liquid in 
which the common rocks are formed, and as analogous to the 
trapps of the primitive earths. 
_ M. Cordier, inspector of mines, and correspondent. of the 
Class, having also directed his attention to this grand problem, 
has imagined, in order to resolve it, means entirely new. 
His first reflections made him perceive that the greatest dif- 
ficulty, in order to compare the matter of a contested nature 
with 
