2/18 Scientific Meeting in Germany. 



to bid eternal defiance alike to time and to tempest. Dr. Kilian 

 then read various letters of compliment or apology, the most in- 

 teresting of which was a note from Alexander von Humboldt, 

 who had been specially invited to assist at the proceedings, but 

 excused himself on the ground of the necessity he felt himself to 

 be under at his advanced period of life, to employ every available 

 moment of his time in the completion of the works which he had 

 now in progress. On Professor Noeggerath's motion, the whole 

 assembly rose up, with acclamation, to testify their respect for the 

 illustrious veteran; and a telegraphic message was despatched to 

 him in the instant informing him of this grateful tribute of homage. 



After the proceedings had been duly opened, Professor Schulz- 

 enstein delivered an address on the value of the natural sciences 

 as a means of educating the human mind. Professor Mad- 

 ler of Dorpat then read a contribution on the subject of the fixed 

 stars. The motions, he said, of certain fixed stars were not com- 

 patible with the assumption of a 'central sun ; nor did the assump- 

 tion of partial systems appear admissible, inasmuch as, for 

 the explanation of the size of the measured motions of in- 

 dividual fixed stars, the central masses — if such existed — 

 must possess a mass incredibly great. The centre of gravity of 

 the fixed siderial system, which may possibly lie in empty space, 

 was to be regarded as the centre of motion. If the system pos- 

 sessed a globular form, with a nearly uniform distribution of the 

 masses in the interior of the globe, the period of revolution of the 

 various masses would be of nearly similar length, so that the whole 

 viewed from one of the stars in conjunct motion, must appear 

 nearly immoveable. A more definite decision was to be expected 

 only from later centuries enriched with the spoils of long series 

 of observations. The speaker considered it probable that the cen- 

 tral point lay in the region of Taurus, perhaps in the group of the 

 Pleiades, the apparent motions of which seemed best to harmonise 

 with that assumption. 



Dr. Hamel, of St. Petersburgh, then delivered a discourse, in 

 which he endeavoured to trace the history of the invention of the 

 Electric Telegraph. The first telegraphic apparatus worked by 

 galvanism was that exhibited by Soemmering on the 29th August 

 1809, before the Academy of Sciences at Munich, iu which the 

 mode of signalling consisted in the development of gas bubbles 

 from water placed in a series of glass tubes, each of which denoted 

 a letter of the alphabet. Baron Schilling, attached to the Rus- 



