SCIENCE 



FRIDAY, NOVEMBER i8, 1887. 



raphy under the provisions of the Henry Draper Memorial Fund. 

 A full list of the papers read is given in another column. 



The closing session of the National Academy of Sciences, 

 which was held Friday at Columbia College, was perhaps the most 

 interesting of the series that occupied the greater part of last week. 

 Unfortunately, in view of this fact, the attendance was smaller than 

 on any of the previous days, as several of the members had ac- 

 cepted an invitation from Professor Edison to visit Menlo Park. The 

 session opened with an interesting paper by Prof. W. P. Trow- 

 bridge. It has always been a puzzle how the muscular action 

 necessary to keep birds on the wing so long as they often remain 

 could be possible ; and Professor Trowbridge explained the recent 

 discovery by his son, which is that birds of prey and some others 

 have the power to lock securely together those parts of the wing 

 holding the extended feathers and corresponding to the fingers of 

 the human hand. The action of the air on the wing in this con- 

 dition extends the elbow, which is prevented from opening too far 

 by a cartilage, and the wings may keep this position for an indefi- 

 nite length of time, with no muscular action whatever on the part 

 of the bird. While resting in this way, the bird cannot rise in a 

 still atmosphere ; but, if there be a horizontal current, it may allow 

 itself to be carried along by it, with a slight tendency downward, 

 and so gain a momentum by which, with a slight change of direc- 

 tion, it may rise to some extent, still without muscular action of the 

 wings. The professor also believed it quite possible for a bird to 

 sleep on the wing. In discussing this paper. Prof. J. S. Newberry 

 said that he had once shot a bird which came slowly to the ground 

 as if still flying, but reached it dead. He believed that it had died 

 high in the air ; but he had never been able to account for the man- 

 ner of its descent till now, when he found an explanation in the state- 

 ment of Professor Trowbridge. Professor Newberry read a paper 

 on the future of gold and silver production. Beginning with gold, 

 he said that he had spent a part of nearly every summer since 1855 

 among the mines of the West, and he believed that the production 

 of the United States was past its maximum. The present annual 

 production amounts to $30,000,000. In the northern parts of the 

 mountains of the West there is probably gold, and it may be hoped 

 that a considerable contribution to the gold of the world will be 

 made from this region. There are no important deposits of gold 

 in Mexico. The western coast of South America, rich in silver, is 

 poor in gold. It is likely that the ancient inhabitants practically ex- 

 hausted the supply, and the images of this metal which they buried 

 with the dead have been sought, with some success. The product 

 of Europe is about $30,000,000 annually, more than three-fourths 

 of which is from the Ural Mountains. We need not expect any 

 such quantities of gold as flooded the world from California, Aus- 

 tralia, and New Zealand, but it may be hoped that the present pro- 

 duction may be kept up for many years. The problems of silver- 

 production for the future seem to lie wholly within our own coun- 

 try. There has been a production amounting to more than six 

 thousand millions of dollars since the discovery of America, and it 

 is likely to reach from forty to fifty millions annually for some years 

 to come. The mines of Peru and Bolivia are the most famous in 

 the world, and it is estimated that they have yielded $2,493,268,- 

 800. Their yield has been comparatively little for many years. On 

 Wednesday evening Mrs. Henry Draper gave a reception at her 

 home, No. 271 Madison Avenue, to the members of the academy. 

 The leading feature was an account given by Prof. E. C. Pickering, 

 director of the Harvard Observatory, of the work in stellar photog- 



At the annual fall meeting of the trustees of Princeton, 

 held Nov. 10, Dr. McCosh resigned the office of president, his resig- 

 nation to take effect at the end of next term. In closing his annual 

 report. Dr. McCosh said, " For several years past I have been sen- 

 sitive as to whether I may not be continuing in my office to the 

 detriment of the college. I am so far relieved by finding that no 

 such effect has yet followed. Our entrance class this year, 179, is 

 larger than ever it was before ; as also our total number of students, 

 603. It was 264 when I came here, and this while we have grad- 

 ually been raising our standard of scholarship. Thanks to our 

 generous benefactors, our grounds and buildings, books and appa- 

 ratus, have been doubled or trebled. But having been in your ser- 

 vice for over nineteen years, and being several years above the 

 threescore and ten, the time has come to look to my retiring from 

 the presidency of the college. I see it clearly to be my duty to ask 

 the board to accept my resignation at its next meeting in February, 

 and appoint a successor to me, it being understood that I retain my 

 office till the beginning of the third term. I leave the college in a 

 healthy state, intellectually, morally, and religiously." Dr. McCosh 

 was born in Ayrshire, Scotland, in 181 1. Educated in the univer- 

 sities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, he early began to show signs of 

 literary and philosophical talent of a high order. His first serious 

 work, an essay on the Stoic philosophy, obtained for him the honor- 

 ary degree of M.A., and he was ordained a minister of the Church 

 of Scotland at Arbroath in 1835. In 1839 he removed to Brechin, 

 and from that time he took a prominent part in the disputes which 

 arose in connection with the disruption of the Scotch Church, and 

 the organization of the ' Free Church,' which was effected in 1843. 

 His next work to attract attention was ' The Method of the Divine 

 Government, Physical and Moral,' which was a theological applica- 

 tion of Sir William Hamilton's philosophy. In 1851 he was ap- 

 pointed professor of logic and metaphysics in Queen's College, Bel- 

 fast, and wrote, in collaboration with Prof. G. Dickie, ' Typical 

 Forms and Special Ends in Creation,' and 'Intuitions of the Mind,' 

 which were followed by ' An Examination of Mill's Philosophy.' 

 Dr. McCosh was elected president of the College of New Jersey at 

 Princeton in 1868, and has held that office up to the present time. 

 Among the works he has written in the mean time may be men- 

 tioned, ' The Laws of Discursive Thought,' ' Treatise on Logic,' 

 ' Christianity and Positivism,' the ' Scotch Philosophy, Biographical, 

 Expository, and Critical, from Hutcheson to Hamilton,' and his 

 famous ' Reply to Professor Tyndall's Belfast Address.' 



THE ' ACT OF GOD ' AND THE RAILWAY-COMPANY. 



So far back that memory of man runneth not to the contrary — 

 imported into the very earliest English jurisprudence from the 

 Roman Code — was the theory of Nemesis, of the Inevitable, the 

 Unavoidable. When it reached our motherland and Christian 

 times, and clamored for recognition in the Common Law, our rev- 

 erent Norman-Saxon lawyers, to be sure, called it the ' Act of 

 God.' But it was the Stoic 'Fate' of the Roman — his ' Nemesis,' 

 his 'Adrastea' — just the same; and the earliest English digests 

 declared that ' the Act of God or of the public enemy ' discharged 

 all legal responsibility. In our day the doctrine is oftener laughed 

 at than applied. A Western counsel for a railway-company, who, 

 in defending an action for damages for haystacks destroyed by fire 

 communicated from the company's locomotive, claimed that his 



