of a new form of binary arithmetic ; of systems of linear and associative 

 algebra ; of Espy's theory of storms ; of various mechanical games, puzzles, 

 etc. ; of various problems in geodesy ; of the lunar tables, and occultations 

 of the Pleiades, etc., etc. When in 1846 he announced in the American 

 Academy that Galle's discovery of Neptune in the place predicted by Le 

 Verrier was a happy accident, the President, Edward Everett, " hoped the 

 announcement would not be made public : nothing could be more improbable 

 than such a coincidence." "Yes," replied Peirce, " but it would be still more 

 strange if there were an error in my calculations," a' confident assertion 

 which the lapse of time has vindicated. None of his labors, perhaps, lie far- 

 ther above the ordinary reach of thought than his little lithographed volume 

 on Linear and Associative Algebra. In this he discusses the nature of mathe- 

 matical methods, and the characteristics which are necessary to give novelty 

 and unity to a calculus. Then he passes to a description of seventy or eighty 

 different kinds of simple calculus. Almost no comment is given; but the 

 mathematical reader discovers, as he proceeds, that only three species of cal- 

 culus, having each a unity in itself, have been hitherto used to any great ex- 

 tent, namely, ordinary algebra, differentials or fluxions, and quaternions. 

 Whether the clinant algebra of Ellis would stand Peirce's tests, we have not 

 examined. But what a wonderful volume of prophecy that is which describes 

 seventy or eighty species of algebra, any one of which would require genera- 

 tion after generation of ordinary mathematicians to develop ! Besides his 

 labors as professor at Cambridge, Peirce was always of great assistance in 

 the American Ephemeris, and in the Coast Survey, of which he was for a 

 time superintendent. The reports of that Survey and the tables of the 

 Ephemeris have rapidly raised the scientific reputation of America, which, in 

 1843, stooc l m astronomy among the lowest of civilized nations, and is now 

 among the highest, a change which was by no means ungrateful to Peirce's 

 strongly patriotic feeling, and which he could not but know was as much due 

 to himself as to any other person. 



FROM THE WOMAN'S JOURNAL, OCT. 23. 



THE death of this chief among American mathematicians should cause an 

 especial feeling of loss on the part of women, inasmuch as he, like his friend 



