Nov, 8, 1877] 



NATURE 



37 



which are not likely to be material, would be in perihelion 

 again about July 20 ; this date, however, will be uncer- 

 tain, as thus far no definite discussion of the observations 

 in 1873 has been published. Some time since it was 

 stated that Herr Schulhof, of the Vienna Observatory, 

 was at work upon this comet. With the above date for 

 perihelion passage, the apparent path would be favourable 

 for observations, and the comet would approach the earth 

 almost as closely as is possible with the actual form of 

 orbit. 



NOTES 



The session of the Royal Society opens next Thursday with the 

 Bakerian Lecture On the Organisation of the Fossil Plants of the 

 Coal Measures, Part ix., which will be delivered by Prof. W. 

 C. Williamson, of Manchester, F. R.S. 



We learn from the Titnes that the following is the list 

 of the new Council which will be submitted to the Royal 

 Society for election at their anniversary meeting on St. 

 Andrew's Day next, the 30th instant : — President, Sir 

 Joseph Dalton Hooker, C.B., K.C.S.I., M.D., D.C.L., 

 LL.D. ; Treasurer, William Spottiswoode, M.A., LL.D. ; 

 Secretaries, Prof. George Gabriel Stokes, M.A. D.C.L., LL.D., 

 Prof. Thomas Henry Huxley, LL D. ; Foreign Secretary, Prof. 

 Alexander William Williamson, Ph.D. ; other members of the 

 Council— Frederick A. Abel, C.B., V.P.C.S., William Bow- 

 man, F.R.C.S., Frederick J. Bramwell, M.I.C.E., William B. 

 Carpenter, C.B., M.D., LL.D., William Carruthers, F.L.S., 

 William Crookes, V.P.C.S., Prof. P. Martin Duncan, M.B., 

 P.G.S., William Farr, M.D., D.C.L., Prof. William H. Flower, 

 F.R.C.S., Prof. G. Carey Foster, B.A., F.C.S., John Russell 

 Hind, F.R.A.S., Lord Rayleigh, M.A., Vice-Admiral Sir G. 

 H. Richards, C.B., Prof. Henry J. Stephen Smith, M.A., 

 Prof. Balfour Stewart, M.A., and Pro^. Allen Thomson, M.D., 

 F.R.S.E. 



Mr. F. M. Balfour, Fellow and Lecturer of Trinity College, 

 Cambridge, has joined the editorial staff of the Quarterly Journal 

 of Microscopic Science. The journal will in future be conducted 

 by Prof. Ray Lankester as responsible editor, with the co-opera- 

 tion of Mr. Archer in Dublin, Mr. Balfour in Cambridge, and 

 Dr. Klein in London. The volume for the year just concluded 

 shows an increase in the number and efficiency of the lithographic 

 plates. Instead of sixteen octavo plates as usual four years ago, 

 there are twenty-five, many of which are double sized, and some 

 coloured. 



Madame Leverrier, the' widow of the astronomer, died on 

 November i, at the age of fifty-eight years. This lady was 

 suffering from a protracted illness, when the loss of her husband 

 produced a shock from which she was not able to recover. She 

 was a daughter of M. Choquet, an eminent professor of mathe- 

 matics in Paris. Her father, about e'ghty years old, was present 

 at the funeral. On the very day that Madame Leverrier died, 

 the yournal Officiel published a decree, signed by M. Brunet, 

 the Minister of Public Instruction, ordering the bust of Leverrier 

 to be placed in the Palace at Versailles, where are to be collected 

 the memorials of the great Frenchmen of the nineteenth century. 

 This honour has been decreed to a number of other men who 

 have ranked foremost amongst litterateurs, artists, or politicians. 

 M. Leverrier, it is strange to say, has been chosen as the only 

 representative of science. 



The French Academy of Medicine has been authorised by the 

 ministry to accept a legacy of 4,000/. bequeathed by Dr. Demor- 

 quay, to help them to build a hall of meeting. 



M. Faye, Inspector-General in Science of Secondary Edu- 

 cation in France, has been appointed to a similar office for 

 superior education in buccession to the late M. Leverrier. M. 

 Fernet has succeeded to M. Faye's post. 



M. Watteville, director of Arts and Sciences in the French 

 Ministry of Pubhc Instruction, has issued a circular notifying 

 that a special exhibition will be held at the Champ de Mars, for 

 collecting the results of the scientific missions granted by the 

 French Government in 1867. Almost every country, civilised 

 and barbarian, near or remote, has been visited. 



M. Bertrand, the perpetual secretary of the French Academy 

 of Sciences, has been appointed by M. Bonnet member of the 

 International Metric Commission. 



Commander Guiseppe Telfener has announced his inten- 

 tion of placing at the disposal of the Italian Geographical 

 Society a sum of 40,000 francs to found a section of commercial 

 geography and organise at Rome a museum to contain specimens 

 of all the products which Italy exports and imports. 



At a meeting held at the London Library on October 26 

 (Mr. Robert Harrison in the chair), it was determined to form 

 an Index Society, with the immediate object of compiling subject 

 indexes and indexes of standard books of facts, to be printed 

 and circulated among the members ; and with the ultimate 

 object of building up a general index of universal literature, 

 which can be referred to at the office of the society during com- 

 pilation. The great aim of the society will be the gradual 

 accumulation of aids towards the preparation of a key to all 

 knowledge, and with this object a library of indexes will be 

 commenced. The subscription will be one guinea. Subscribers' 

 names and suggestions on the subject of the proposed society will 

 be received by Henry B. Wheatley, hon. sec. pro tern., 5, 

 Minford Gardens, West Kensington Park, W. The utility of 

 such a society and such an index to scientific men of all classes 

 and grades will be obvious, and the effort now being made 

 deserves their hearty support. 



The system under which the official addresses are made at the 

 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science seems curiously complicated, and sometimes is 

 a puzzle even to the old members of that body. The retiring 

 president, who has been the presiding officer in the preceding 

 year, makes the opening address, which is the presidential 

 address for that year. The presidents of the sections, on the 

 other hand, who have just entered on their duties, open their 

 sections respectively with an address. There are only two sec- 

 tions, A and B ; other divisions are parts of these, and are 

 characterised as sub-sections. Section A has charge of mathe- 

 matics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, and microscopy ; Section 

 B of zoology, botany, geology, palaeontology, ethnology, and 

 archaeology. There is a further complication in the circumstance 

 that the presidents of the sections are also the two vice-presidents 

 of the Association. To illustrate this arrangement, we may cite 

 proceedings at the meeting of last August at Nashville. Prof. 

 W. B. Rogers, who was the president of the Association last 

 year, and president at the Buffalo meeting, was expected to open 

 the Nashville meeting with the presidential address, but was 

 prevented by illneis. Professors E. C. Pickering and O. C. 

 Marsh are respectively presidents for the present year of Sections 

 A and B, and also vice-presidents of the Association. The 

 address on "The Introduction and Succession of Vertebrate 

 Life in America," by Prof. Marsh, which we recently published 

 in full, was his official address as the president of Section B, 

 delivered at the opening of the Section. To carry the illustra- 

 tion further, it may be added that Prof. Marsh, who was elected 

 at this year's meeting, president of the Association, will not 

 preside till next year at St. Louis, and will not be expected to 

 deliver his presidential address unul the meeting of the following 

 year, 1879. 



The death is announced of Dr. Henry Lawson, until recentiy 

 editor of the Popular Science Review. 



Mr. James Flower, for many years the articulator of the 

 skeletons at the Royal College of Surgeons, has just died from 



