GENERAL MEETING. 15 
All were identified as the property of the United States by letters 
cast in the plates. 
The charted currents of the ocean readily explain the courses 
and account for the positions of many of these buoys, but others 
appear anomalous. 
Mr. JENKINS cited an instance of a bell-buoy, carried away from 
the coast of the United States in 1850, which was seen and heard 
while adrift and finally stranded on the southwest coast of Ireland. 
Mr. WELLING suggested that the phenomena might not be refer- 
able to ocean currents exclusively, but in part to wind currents. 
Mr. Jonnson judged from the forms of the buoys that their move- 
ments would be controlled more by currents than by winds. 
Mr. H. Farquuar and Mr. JENKINS were of opinion that the 
buoy picked up off Florida might have been carried there by the 
southward coast-current. Mr. Dawu concurred, but thought it also 
possible that it had made the entire circuit of the Sargasso sea. 
Mr. Daut, referring to Mr. WELLING’s suggestion, said that 
wind and current worked together, and their effects could not be 
discriminated. The wind does not blow prevailingly in any direc- 
tion without coercing currents to correspondence. 
247TH MEETING. FEBRUARY 16, 1884. 
The President in the Chair. 
Fifty-four members and guests present. 
The Auditing Committee reported through its Chairman, Mr. C. 
A. Wuirs, that it had examined the accounts of the Treasurer for 
1883, finding the same properly vouched in respect to expenditures 
and receipts. On motion of Mr. Durron, the report was accepted. 
The Chair announced the election to membership of Mr. Henry 
Wayne Buair and Mr. Hersert GoUVERNEUR OGDEN. 
Mr. F. W. CLARKE made a communication on 
THE PERIODIC LAW OF CHEMICAL ELEMENTS. 
After giving an account of the law as worked out by Newlands, 
Mendelejeff, and Lothar Meyer, he exhibited an enlarged copy of 
