June 27, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



985 



was by birth an Irishman. His father, who 

 was descended from an ancient French fam- 

 ily, left his native land just before the Revo- 

 lution and emigrated to Ireland, where he 

 married a Miss Thompson. About 1820 they 

 returned to France with their six children 

 who had been born in Ireland. Two of the 

 children, the brothers, Antoine and Arnaud, 

 became scientists and performed much of 

 their scientific exploration together in Abys- 

 sinia and Ethiopia. Antoine was chief of 

 the Venus expedition to Hayti in 1882. Ex- 

 ploration, seismology, geodesy, meteorology, 

 astronomy, claimed his attention at different 

 periods of his life. His principal published 

 work was the monumental " Geodesie de la 

 haute Ethiope " (1873) , which appeared 

 shortly after his election to the Academy of 

 Sciences. 



General Jean Baptiste Marie Charles 

 Meusnier de Laplace was born at Tours in 

 1754, and died at Mayence in 1793, as the re- 

 sult of wounds received in battle. Although 

 thus cut off at the early age of 39 " il laissait " 

 to quote the words of one of his friends, " des 

 traces brillantes d'un intelligence d'elite 

 secondee par un zele infatigable." 



His single memoir in pure mathematics was 

 written just as he was leaving the Ecole Poly- 

 technique and contains a complete theory of 

 the curvature of surfaces' from an entirely 

 different point of view from that which 

 Euler illuminated in 1763.' When Meusnier's 

 memoir was presented to the Institut in 1776 it 

 created a sensation (d'Alembert exclaimed, 

 " Meusnier commence comme je finis ") ; and 

 although only 22 years of age he was immedi- 



" ' ' M'gmoire sur la courbune des Surfaces, ' ' 

 Savants strangers, t. X., 1785, pp. 477-510. It is 

 this memoir which contains the famous theorem 

 concerning the curvature of oblique sections of 

 surfaces, with which Meusnier's name is always 

 associated. English TTrit€rs and the American his- 

 torian Cajori incorrectly write Meusnier's name 

 without the s. 



* ' ' Eecherches sur la courbune des Surfaces, ' ' 

 Memoires de I' Acad. d. so. de Berlin, [t. XVI.] 

 (1760), 1767, pp. 119-143-1-2 Taf. A memoir 

 with this title was presented to the academy by 

 C. G. J. Jacobi on September 8, 1763. 



ately elected a correspondent of the Academy 

 of Sciences. While connected with the army 

 during the next few years, Meusnier con- 

 structed a machine for the distillation of sea 

 water and the extraordinary results, in con- 

 nection with both the theory and practise of 

 aerostation, which he presented to the Acad- 

 emy in 1784, brought about his election as 

 academician. 



It was in 1783 that Lavoisier and Laplace 

 maintained before the Institut that the " ele- 

 ment " water was formed by the combustion of 

 hydrogen in oxygen. But some doubt existed 

 as to the conclusions. This doubt was forever 

 removed a year later, through experiment in- 

 spired by the genius of Meusnier. The subject 

 was presented to the Academy in a " Memoire 

 . . . par MM. Meusnier et Lavoisier." 



R. 0. Archibald 



Brown University, 

 Providence, E. I. 



Color Standards and Nomenclature. By 

 Egbert Eidgway, M.S., G.M.Z.S., etc.; 

 Curator of the Division of Birds, U. S. 

 National Museum. Pp. iii -{- 44, with 53 

 plates containing illustrations of 1,115 

 named colors, and providing a system of 

 nomenclature permitting the definite loca- 

 tion and designation of over 4,000 colors. 

 Published by the author, Washington, D. C. 

 Press work by A. Hoen & Co., Baltimore. 

 This work is a conspicuous example of that 

 devotion to science which has led a few men 

 to give the better part of their lives to the 

 accomplishment of some important task, their 

 hope of reward being little more than the 

 satisfaction of having finished a work that 

 will serve to advance science, and thus con- 

 tribute to the welfare of mankind. More than 

 twenty years ago the author began the at- 

 tempt to supply a practical means of identi- 

 fying the color of natural objects, so that this 

 important property of these objects might be 

 used with some degree of precision in identi- 

 fying them. The task has been an enormous 

 one, involving much pioneering in a little 

 understood field of science. Many important 

 problems had to be solved before the work 



