442 
GENERAL. 
WE record with much regret the death of 
Mr. Theodore Lyman, the only honorary mem- 
ber of the National Academy of Sciences, for- 
merly member of Congress and a distinguished 
officer in the army during the Civil War. Col- 
onel Lyman was born in 1833 and died on the 
night of September 9th, at his summer home, 
at Nahant, Mass. He studied under Louis 
Agassiz, whose daughter he married. Colonel 
Lyman was a zoologist and geologist of distine- 
tion. He was the representative of a class 
more common in Great Britain than in the 
United States—a man of wealth, public spirit 
and wide culture, who contributed both directly 
and indirectly to the advancement of education, 
science and civilization. 
THE membership of the National Academy 
of Science is now eighty-three. The deaths 
and elections to the Academy during the last 
six years have been as follows : 
Deaths. Elections. 
1891. 
Julius E. Hilgard, None. 
John Le Conte, 
Joseph Leidy, 
Miers F'. Longstreth. 
1892. ‘ 
T. Sterry Hunt, Carl Barus, 
Joseph Lovering, S. F. Emmons, 
J.S. Newberry, M. Carey Lea. 
Lewis M. Rutherfurd, : 
William P. Trowbridge, 
Sereno Watson. 
1893. 
W. H. C. Bartlett, None. 
F. A. Genth. 
1894. 
Charles E. Brown-Sequard, None. 
Josiah P. Cooke. 
1895. 
James D. Dana, W. L. Elkin, 
John Newton, C. S. Sargent, 
James E. Oliver. W. H. Welch, 
C. O. Whitman. 
1896. 
Thomas L. Casey, C. D. Walcott, 
G. Brown Goode, R. S. Woodward. 
Benjamin A. Gould, 
H. A. Newton. 
1897. 
E. D. Cope, E. W. Morley, 
M. Carey Lea, C. S. Minot, 
A. M. Mayer, W. H. Dall, 
J. H. Trumbull, F. A. Gooch. 
F. A. Walker, 
Theodore Lyman. 
SCIENCE. 
[N. 8S. Vou. VI. No. 142. 
The original act incorporating the National 
Academy, in 1863, limited the number of ordi- 
nary members to fifty, but this restriction was 
removed in 1870. A wise conservatism has re- 
garded one hundred members as a suitable 
limit, but there appears to be no reason why 
the membership should decrease while the 
scientific activity of the country increases. 
Fifteen new members of the Royal Society are 
elected annually. 
THE seventh annual directory of the Scien- 
tific Alliance of New York, for the year ending 
1897, has been published by the Council. The 
number of members is 1,055, an increase of 
forty over last year. The membership of the 
several societies comprising the Alliance is as 
follows : 
The New York Academy of Sciences, resident 
members and fellows, 284 
Torrey Botanical Club, active members, 221 
New York Microscopical Society, active mem- 
bers, 88 
The Linnean Society of New York, resident 
members, 169 
The New York Mineralogical Club, total mem- 
bership, j 65 
American Mathematical Society, local member- 
ship, 
The New York Section of the American Chemi- 
cal Society, active members, 282 
The New York Entomological Society, active 
members, 48 
Asourt fifty members of the British Associa- 
tion from Great Britain, including Lord Kelvin, 
Lord Lister and Sir John Evans, haye taken 
part in the extended excursion to the Pacific 
Coast following the Toronto meeting of the As- 
sociation. 
THE item, circulated by the newspapers, to 
the effect that four Ohio men of science had 
been treated with scant courtesy at the meet- 
ing of the British Association, is entirely with- 
out foundation. The complaint comes from 
only one of the number, a collector of fossils 
and a manufacturer of casts of the same, who 
failed to secure an announcement, concerning 
his specimens, in the geological section. There 
was, of course, no international feeling involved 
in the matter, The other three, professors in 
Cleveland and Oberlin, whose names were used 
