46 



The regular and frequent appearance of the ' Comptes Rendus,' 

 and of the Abbe* Moigno's ' Cosmos/ containing, as they do, the 

 earliest notices of important memoirs, and the publication in full of 

 many memoirs in the ' Annales de Chimie,' render superfluous any 

 mention of the labours of men of science in France. So also, very 

 striking discoveries, such for instance as the qualitative analysis by 

 the lines of the spectrum, and the consequent discovery of a new 

 element, due to Professors Bunsen and Kirchhoff, published in the 

 English Journals almost as soon as they are made, may be passed 

 over in silence. 



For most of the following notices I am indebted to the kindness of 

 our Foreign Member, M. Haidinger, of Vienna. On receiving a letter 

 containing the substance of the Resolution of the Council, he sent a 

 printed circular, dated Sept. 1, 1860, to various active labourers in 

 the field of science, inviting them to send a short account of the re- 

 searches in which they themselves or others had been engaged, to 

 the Foreign Secretary of the Royal Society. This appeal was re- 

 sponded to by the arrival of a number of letters containing a large 

 amount of information which would otherwise have been most dif- 

 ficult to obtain. 



The ' Denkschriften ' and * Sitzungsberichte ' of the Academy of 

 Sciences of Vienna are peculiarly rich in memoirs on Mineralogy, 

 Crystallography, and on the optical and physical properties of Cry- 

 stals, by MM. Haidinger, Zippe, Schabus, v. Zepharovich, Kengott, 

 Hochstetter, Carl v. Hauer, v. Lang, Murmann, Rotter, Weiss, 

 Handl, Dauber, Schrauf, Leydolt, Grailich, of whom the last two 

 have been lately cut off by an early death. Many of these papers 

 date back too far to be included in the present notice. Some 

 of the most important of the recent communications on these 

 subjects are by M. Haidinger, on Meteorites, on the form and 

 optical characters of Hornesite, a new mineral species belonging 

 to the isomorphous group containing Vivianite, and several other 

 hydrous arseniates and phosphates : by M. v. Zepharovich, who 

 has also contributed many papers on Mineralogy, Geology, and Phy- 

 sical Geography, to the ' Jahrbucher der k. k. geologischen Reichs- 

 anstalt' of Vienna, on a new determination of the forms and 

 angles of epidote, and some laboratory crystals not previously 

 measured : by M. Carl v. Hauer, on Crystallogenesis, and on 



