Miscellanies. 191 



tected the destruction of the lens and of its capsule, under circum- 

 stances which would not otherwise have led to the conclusion that 

 they had been destroyed, and where vision had been obtained by the 

 use of a cataract lens. 



June 21, 1839. — The librarian was authorized to take order in rela- 

 tion to an exchange of the Transactions of the Society, for the Journal 

 of the Boston Natural History Society. 



The committee on the letters of Mr. J. P. Hulliken and Dr. Town- 

 send reported, and was discharged. 



The committee to whom was referred the publication of certain 

 meteorological tables, accidentally omitted in their place in the Trans- 

 actions, and the journal of Dr. Thomas Hewson, reported in favor of 

 the publication of certain of the former and of the latter. 



Dr. Bache presented a translation of an obituary notice of Profes- 

 sor Rask of Copenhagen, late a member of the Society, to be depos- 

 ited in the archives of the Society. 



Mr. Vaughan informed the Society of the decease of Doctor Thomas 

 Cooper, a member of the Society, who died on the eleventh of May 

 last. 



Dr. Hays communicated verbally the case of a woman laboring 

 under an affection of the optic nerve, in which a defect in the recog- 

 nition of colors was developed, according to her statement, at the 

 same time with the affection of the general vision, and in which a 

 partial recovery of the power of vision had been attended with the re- 

 covery of the power to distinguish colors. 



Dr. Hare laid before the Society, portions of barium, strontium and 

 calcium, and stated the considerations which led him to attempt their 

 extrication, and the means by which he had succeeded. 



July 17, 1839. — The Committee on the observations of the Solar 

 Eclipse of May 14-15, 1836, reported, and their report was ordered 

 for publication. 



The American observations, twenty eight in number, were given at 

 length. At the invitation of Mr. C, Rumker, Director of the Hamburg 

 Observatory, conveyed through Prof. A. D. Bache, twenty one of 

 these observations had been forwarded by Mr. John Vaughan to that 

 distinguished astronomer, for comparison with those which had been 

 made in Europe. The report contained a letter from Mr. Rumker, in 

 which the time of ecliptic conjunction, with its variations for the small 

 errors of the tables, was deduced from each of the European and 

 American observations. Mr. Rumker remarks, that the corrections 

 of this time for the corrections of the moon's declination and parallax, 

 appearing with opposite signs in the observations on the two conti- 

 nents, afford unusual facilities for determining these corrections, par- 



