PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 23 



tude, as one which seems to him difficult to explain on any theory 

 that the aurora was a local phenomenon. 



The meeting then adjourned. 



186th Meeting. October 23, 1880. 



The President in the Chair. 

 The minutes of last meeting were read and adopted. 



The President notified the meeting of the decease of General A. 

 J. Myee, one of the members of the Society. 



Dr. Toner moved the appointment of a committee to draft reso- 

 lutions suitable to the occasion. 



Committee appointed : Messrs. J. C. Welling, Cleveland Abbe* 

 Garrick Mallery. 



The committee appointed at the last meeting of the Society, to 

 report a resolution commemorative of the decease of Prof. Peiece, 

 reported as follows : 



Besovled, That the Philosophical Society of Washington put on 

 record their appreciation of the eminent services to science rendered 

 by the late Prof. Benjamin Peirce, of Harvard University, some 

 time since Superintendent of the United States Coast Survey, and 

 during that time a member of this Society. His introduction of 

 the new modes of condensed mathematical thought into celestial 

 mechanics, and his development of new algebraic methods to their 

 uttermost limit, will ever mark him as one of the most powerful 

 mathematicians of our age. 



Mr. Alvord said he had a warm sympathy with this just and 

 appropriate tribute to the memory of Benjamin Peirce. Though 

 he could say much in admiration of his genius and of his works, 

 he would now only make an allusion to a mathematical discussion 

 in which Prof. Peirce referred to his friend Agassiz, for whom he 

 always expressed a warm regard. 



In the spring of 1865 Prof Peirce invited the speaker to attend 

 the meeting, at Northampton, in August of that year, of the 

 National Academy of Science, at which he expected to read a 

 paper. On reaching the room was found arranged around the 

 walls about a dozen large drawings to illustrate the " Path of the 

 Sling," which was his topic. He had obtained an equation of this 



