BARAGUAY D'HILLIERS, AOHILLE. 



BEECHER, CATHERINE E. 



53 



schools. The Union had during the year built 

 14 new chapels, giving accommodation to 10,- 

 000 persons, at a cost of 59,435. One thou- 

 sand pounds had been raised during the year 

 for the beneficiary fund ; the ministers' provi- 

 dent fund had a capital of nearly 3,000 ; and 

 a chapel debt and building fund was about to 

 be started with a capital of 4,000. The in- 

 come of the general fund was 528, of the 

 beneficiary fund 375, of the educational fund 

 464, of the Home Missionary Society 1,647. 

 The Educational Committee had 13 students 

 on its rolls, and the Home Missionary So-, 

 ciety returned 21 missionaries, 141 mission 

 stations, 1,720 members, and contributions 

 froi the mission churches of 1,000. 



BARAGUAY D'HILLIERS, Count ACHILLE, 

 a French general, born September 6, 1795, died 

 June 6, 1878. He took part in the campaign 

 of 1812, and in the Spanish and Algerian cam- 

 paigns. He became lieutenant-general and 

 commandant of Constantine in 1843, but was 

 superseded in the following year. In the Con- 

 stituent Assembly of 1848, of which he was a 

 member, he usually voted with the Right. He 

 was placed in command of the army sent 

 against the Roman Republic, and in 1851 suc- 

 ceeded Changarnier as commandant of Paris, 

 but resigned six months afterward. In 1854 

 he commanded the Baltic expedition, and the 

 capture of Bomarsund made him a Marshal 

 and Senator. He also distinguished himself 

 at the battle of Solferino in 1859. In July, 

 1870, he again became commandant of Paris, 

 but resigned on the formation of the Palikao 

 Cabinet. After the conclusion of peace he pre- 

 sided over the inquiry into the numerous ca- 

 pitulations, and in 1872 over the court-mar- 

 tial which sentenced General Cramer to one 

 month's imprisonment. 



BECQUEREL, ANTOINE CESAR, physicist, 

 died in Paris, January 18, 1878. He was born 

 March 8, 1788 ; made a full course of study in 

 the Paris Polytechnic School ; in 1808 was 

 attached to the engineer corps of the imperial 

 army; served with distinction through the 

 entire Spanish campaign ; in 1812 was pro- 

 moted to a captaincy in his corps, and deco- 

 rated with the cross of a chevalier of the Le- 

 gion of Honor. In 1815, on the downfall of 

 Bonaparte, he resigned from the army, to de- 

 vote himself to chemical and physical research, 

 and became an instructor in the Paris Museum 

 of Natural History. He succeeded to a pro- 

 fessorship in that institution in 1837, which 

 position he continued to occupy down to his 

 death. His chosen field of research was elec- 

 tricity and magnetism, and with these two 

 important branches of physical science his 

 name is inseparably linked. His experiments 

 in thermo electricity resulted in the formu- 

 lation of the thermo-electric series, bismuth, 

 platinum, lead, tin, gold, silver, copper, zinc, 

 iron, and antimony. With the aid of delicate 

 apparatus devised by himself, he was enabled 

 to demonstrate the development of faint elec- 



tric currents by the operations of the animal 

 economy, thus giving confirmation to the theory 

 proposed by himself, that all chemical actions 

 develop electric currents. Further, he deter- 

 mined the electric conductivity of sundry ele- 

 ments and compounds. But the discovery 

 which constitutes his strongest claim to rank 

 as a benefactor of mankind is, perhaps, that of 

 the deposition of metal on the negative elec- 

 trode, when the two poles of a battery are in- 

 troduced into solutions of various metallic salts. 

 This observation he made in 1834, and shortly 

 after he discovered that by using feeble cur- 

 rents the metal could be deposited very evenly 

 on the surface of the electrode, and that the 

 two solutions required for the purpose could 

 be kept from mingling by interposing between 

 them an animal membrane without hindering 

 the current. In 1840 De la Rive made prac- 

 tical application of this discovery for the pur- 

 pose of gold-plating ; thus the important art 

 of electro-plasty had for its real author this 

 indefatigable investigator. He continued to 

 pursue his researches in electricity down to 

 the day of his death, but there is not room 

 here even for a bare list of his discoveries. 

 Becquerel composed numerous treatises on phys- 

 ical science, chiefly, of course, on electricity and 

 magnetism ; among them may be named his 

 " Experimental Treatise on Electricity," etc. 

 (7 vols.) ; u Elements of Electro-Chemistry," 

 " Terrestrial Physics and Meteorology," " His- 

 tory of Electricity and Magnetism," and many 

 others. He was for fifty years a member of 

 the Paris Academy of Sciences ; was a corre- 

 sponding member of the London Royal Society, 

 and honored with the Copley medal. He leaves 

 a son who inherits his father's eminent gifts. 



BEECHER, CATHERINE ESTHEI?, died May 

 12, 1878, at Elmira, N. Y., where she had been 

 living with her brother, the Rev. Thomas K. 

 Beecher. She was born at East Hampton, L. I., 

 September 6, 1800, and was the eldest child of 

 the Rev. Lyman Beecher. The death of her 

 mother, when Catherine was about sixteen 

 years of age, brought upon the latter domestic 

 responsibilities which lasted until her fathers 

 second marriage, about two years later. Soon 

 afterward she was betrothed to Professor Fish- 

 er of Yale College, whose death by shipwreck 

 off the coast of Ireland while on a voyage to 

 Europe so affected her that she remained un- 

 married throughout life. Her brother, Henry 

 Ward Beecher, says that this sad event nearly 

 destroyed her religious faith. In 1822 she 

 went to Hartford, Conn., and opened a school 

 for young ladies, which was continued with 

 marked success under her supervision for ten 

 years. During this time she also prepared, 

 primarily for use in her own school, some ele- 

 mentary books in arithmetic and mental and 

 moral philosophy. Her sister, Harriet Beecher 

 Stowe, was her assistant in the Hartford school. 

 In 1832 Catherine went to Cincinnati with her 

 father, who had accepted the presidency of 

 Lane Theological Seminary, and in that city 



