110 THE RETROSPECT OF THE YEAR. 



Pennsylvania and settled in the wilderness where the town 

 of Bethlehem now stands. They were devoted friends of 

 the Indians who were treacherous and laid a plot to again 

 murder the settlers, but were frustrated by the sounding 

 of the trombone chorale used to inform the congregation 

 that a death had taken place. 



Specimens of the chorales were rendered by members 

 of the Cadet Band under the leadership of Mr. Missud. 

 Some of this music dates back to A. D. 380 and 405. 

 The scores were sent the lecturer by a prominent musi- 

 cian, himself a Moravian. As a rule very little is known 

 of the trombone music in this country save by the Mora- 

 vians. Mrs. Woods gave an interesting account of Mora- 

 vians and described the manufacture of the wafer used by 

 them at their communion service. 



Monday, Feb. 2, 1891. Dr. George A. Bates de- 

 livered a lecture on "The Modern Method of the Study of 

 Natural History." He gave a resume of the history of 

 natural history from Linnaeus to Agassiz, touching only the 

 epoch-making periods and characters, such as Linnaeus, 

 Cuvier, Lamarck, Darwin and Agassiz. He spoke of evo- 

 lution and its bearings upon the science of biology and 

 upon subjects on which the naturalists of to-day are at 

 work. These were, mainly, development (embryology, 

 morphology, histology) and ancestry of animals as shown 

 by the light of evolution ; then he gave some thoughts 

 concerning the laws of heredity as suggested by the phe- 

 nomena presented iu the process of egg fertilizations ; next 

 he spoke of the growth and improvement of the micro- 

 scope and invention and importance of the microtome, 

 also of how naturalists work. Section cutting, he said, 

 enables the student to take animals to pieces and study 

 their structure in detail ; thus they are able to get at the 



