lvi. Annual Report of the Council. 



1 841. About this time Trecul was attracted by the study 

 of botany, and shortly afterwards devoted his time entirely 

 to it. He was one of the highest authorities on vegetable 

 organogeny, and published a large number of papers in 

 the Annates des Sciences Naturelles, the Comptes Rendus, &c. 

 Treculia, a genus of the order Artocarpeae, was named in his 

 honour by Decaisne. M. Trecul also occupied himself 

 with the study of fermentations, and his conclusions, 

 differing from those of M. Pasteur, provoked some stormy 

 discussions at the meetings of the Academie des Sciences 

 (1871-72). He was a Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur, 

 and became a member of the Academie des Sciences in 

 March, 1896. Trecul was elected an honorary member of 

 this Society on April 30, 1872. During nearly forty years 

 he lived a very retired life, and died on October 17, 1896, 

 at the age of 78. 



By the death of General Francis Amasa Walker, which 

 occurred at his home in Boston. U.S.A., on January 5, 

 1897, * ne world has lost the most distinguished, original, 

 and attractive American writer on economics. General 

 Walker was himself an expression of that national taste 

 for economic science which has made provision for economic 

 teaching essential in every American college. It is not 

 necessary to make economics a compulsory subject in any 

 academic curriculum in the United States ; the demand 

 for the teaching forces the subject on the attention of all 

 academic authorities as a requirement from any student 

 who aspires to public life. General Walker was also an 

 expression of that freedom from doctrinal prejudice, and of 

 that freshness of thought in the interpretation of experience, 

 which are the natural characteristics of a great Republic 

 whose Constitution is less the result of growth than of a 

 deliberate attempt to create a political, economic, and social 

 system on a scientific basis. What we are accustomed to 

 regard as the peculiarity, not only of American humour, 

 but of the American mental attitude generally, a certain 



