INTRODUCTION. XX111. 



Mr. H. F. Walling read an essay on the "Dissipation of 

 Energy " iti which he stated that the sun was losing its heat so 

 rapidly that there will be a slowing of the machinery of 

 the universe, until stagnation culminates in a total extinction 

 of life. No date given. 



Prof. Franklin B. Hough^ foretold a perpetual drought in 

 consequence of clearing the forests. The result will be a 

 universal famine, and the world will be depopulated by star- 

 vation. No date given. 



The last paper was by Dr. Le Conte, the new President of 

 the Association, and he foretold there would be such an alarm- 

 ing increase of insects, that all vegetation would be destroyed, 

 and finally starving and helpless man himself would be eaten. 

 No date. 



" All of which," says an American paper, " argues an early 

 dropping of the curtain upon the fleeting show of life." 



Is it at all possible that a system of science can be true 

 which permits such an outcrop of startling absurdities, no 

 speculation being too ridiculous to be issued, while the inventor 

 of the most fcwffilyiug announcement becomes the most celebrated 

 man of the time? The wonder, too, is that such illustrious 

 men as Herschell should be led away by the prevailing weak- 

 ness. It is to be hoped that it was only as a joke when he 

 said that some of the spots on the sun, 600 miles long by 300 

 miles wide, might be living creatures ; but Prof. Proctor 

 in his New York Lectures seemed to quote it as a state- 

 ment made in earnest. Prof. Proctor himself indulges in 

 some visionary dreams regarding the exhaustion of the solar 

 heat and the aspect of the inhabitants of Saturn, which 

 axe but a shade removed from the absurd There is nothing 



