ASSOCIATIONS, SCIENCE. (FRENCH.) 



ASTRONOMY, PROGRESS OF. 35 



Wales, Queensland, and New Zealand have been 

 finished, while the parts relating to Victoria and 

 Tasmania are in process of completion. A proj- 

 ect for establishing and endowing a central bio- 

 logical station at Port Jackson was started. A 

 report was presented on the Polynesian races and 

 Polynesian bibliography. New special commit- 

 tees were appointed to investigate and report on 

 the subjects of wheat-rust, the manner of laying 

 out towns, the preparation of geological maps, 

 the arrangement of museums, the fertilization 

 of figs, Australian tides, and the present state 

 of knowledge of Australasian palaeontology ; also 

 a committee was appointed to formulate a 

 ischeme for obtaining practical assistance from 

 the various colonial governments in the collec- 

 tion of material for research chemical, geologi- 

 cal, or biological. 



The next meeting will be held in Christ Church, 

 New Zealand, probably in January, 1891, and 

 ,Sir James Hector has been elected president and 

 Prof. Hutton, of Canterbury College, secretary. 

 It was also decided to hold the fourth in Hobart, 

 'Tasmania, so that the association will not again 

 meet on the mainland for three years. 



French. The nineteenth annual session of 

 the French Association for the Advancement of 

 Science was held in Limoges during Aug. 7 to 

 14. The opening address by the president, Al- 

 fred Cornu, who is professor at the Polytechnic 

 .School in Paris and chief engineer of the Min- 

 ing Bureau, was on " The Part Played by Phys- 

 ics in the Recent Progress of Science.'" The 

 .association was welcomed by the Mayor of Li- 

 moges, after which the general secretary gave a 

 resume of the work done by science in France 

 -during 1889-'90, and then the treasurer made 

 his annual report. 



President's Address. Beginningwith chem- 

 istry, Prof. Cornu pointed out that the introduc- 

 tion and use of the chemical balance by Rich- 

 ter, Wenzel, Dalton, and Lavoisier led to the 

 substitution of the laws of multiple and equiva- 

 lent proportions and the indestructibility of mat- 

 ter for the hypotheses held by the alchemists. 

 After referring to other instruments, he said : 



The introduction of the spectroscope into the chem- 

 ical laboratory for purposes of analysis by Bunsen 

 and Kirchhoff marks an important epooh in the his- 

 tory of chemistry. This instrument has been en- 

 tirely created by the labors of physicists, the prism 

 of Newton, the "telescope of Fraunhofer, and the col- 

 limator of Babinet marking stages in its evolution. 

 Bunsen and Kirchhoff demonstrated the power of their 

 method of analysis by the discovery ot rubidium and 

 caesium ; in fact, it is only necessary to observe an 

 'unknown line in the spectrum of a substance to estab- 

 lish the existence of a new element. 



Continuing his discussion of other apparatus 

 by means of which great advances have been 

 made in the science of physics, he concluded 

 that portion of his address with: "It appears, 

 therefore, that each time chemistry has borrowed 

 from physics some new method it has entered 

 into a prolific field of investigation, conceptions 

 have been extended and given a more precise 

 meaning, and chemical knowledge advanced in 

 A manner proportional to the power of the 

 adopted methods." Then, turning to the other 

 sciences, he said : 



The other natural sciences have benefited in the 

 .same way. Up to the seventeenth century astrono- 



mers had no means of assisting their vision, and 

 therefore they could only make observations of the 

 movements of the heavenly bodies. In spite, how- 

 ever, of the simplicity of the means of observation, 

 Ithe work of Hipparchus, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Tycho 

 Brahe, and Kepler contained a considerable amount 

 of information with respect to celestial motions, but 

 nothing was known of the constitution of the bodies 

 observed. With the refracting telescope of Galileo 

 and Newton's reflector, astronomy underwent a trans- 

 formation ; the sun was found to nave spots and facu- 

 Ise ; the plains, mountains, and craters of the moon 

 were observed; Venus was shown to go through 

 phases in the same manner as our satellite ; Jupiter's 

 belts and satellites were seen ; and the beauty of Sat- 

 urn and his rings revealed. 



With reference to the theory of physics, he 

 said: 



Great advancements have also been made on the 

 purely theoretical side. Ampere, Poisson, Fourier, 

 Ohm, Gauss, Helmboltz, Thomson, and Maxwell have 

 done much to connect electricity with mechanical 

 laws. Again, electro-magnetic and optical phenomena 

 obey the same elementary laws and appear to be two 

 manifestations of the movement of the same medium 

 the ether; thus optical problems may be settled 

 with the equations of electro-magnetism. From an 

 experimental point of view, results full of promise 

 have already been obtained ; the velocity of light, 

 found by optical methods^ has also been determined 

 by measures purely electrical, and recently M. Hertz 

 has accomplished experimentally the identification of 

 electrical discharges with light waves. . . . All these 

 facts show that as our knowledge increases the dis- 

 tinctions between different branches of science van- 

 ish ; the limits which have been traced between them 

 are shown to be artificial, and only testify to ignorance 

 of natural laws ; but the efforts of successive genera- 

 tions have not been in vain, and we look forward to 

 the time when these limits will be effaced and all the 

 branches of natural philosophy be united in one har- 

 monious whole. 



The Treasurer's Report. M. Emile Galant 

 reported the total receipts to be $18,424.60, and 

 the expenditures $14,559.20, while the capital 

 has reached the sum of $167,984.76. Grants 

 amounting to $2,580 were made to scientists en- 

 gaged in prosecuting original investigations. 

 The treasurer congratulated the association on 

 the happy condition of its finances. 



Excursions. Two days of the meeting were 

 especially set apart for excursions. The vicinity 

 of Limoges was thoroughly explored, and the 

 industrial institutions and technical works vis- 

 ited. Besides these, an interesting feature of 

 the meeting was the unveiling of a statue of the 

 great physicist Gay-Lussac, which took place on 

 Aug. 11. Jules Roche, the Minister of Com- 

 merce, presided on that occasion, and an address 

 reviewing the life and work of Gay-Lussac was 

 delivered by P. P. Deherain, one of the vice- 

 presidents of the association. 



ASTRONOMY, PROGRESS OF, IN 1890. 

 Since the close of the astronomical record for 

 1889, the labors of astronomers have been at- 

 tended with more than the usual satisfactory re- 

 sults. Numerous discoveries, some of them highly 

 important, have been made, a synopsis of which 

 will be found in the following pages, covering 

 the year ending with October, 1890. 



United States Eclipse Expedition. To ob- 

 serve the total eclipse of the sun on Dec. 22, 1889, 

 the Government, equipped an expedition on a 

 scale of magnitude vouchsafed to no previous 

 one undertaken by any Government. But, un- 



