526 Miscellaneous Intelligence. 



In 1879 he received the degree of LL.D. from the University 

 of Georgia and the same year he was made a member of the 

 National Academy of Sciences. A younger brother. Professor 

 Joseph LeConte, also of the University of California, and closely 

 associated with him through life, is well known as a geologist and 

 physiologist. 



Julius Erasmus Hilgard, late Superintendent of the United 

 States Coast Survey, died at his home in Washington on the 8th 

 of -May, after a long and painful illness. He was the son of 

 Theodore Erasmus Hilgard, an eminent German jurist, and was 

 bom in Zweibriicken, Bavaria, Jan. 7, 1825. He came to this 

 country when ten years of age, and until 1843 resided in Belle- 

 ville. 111. In that year he removed to Philadelphia, where he 

 took up the study of civil engineering, and two years later he 

 became one of the assistants of Professor Bache on the Coast 

 Survey. In 1862 he was promoted to the position of assistant in 

 charge of the Coast Survey Office. This position he held until 

 1881, when, upon the death of Captain Patterson, be was ap- 

 pointed Superintendent ; increasing physical disability, however, 

 interfered with the discharge of his duties and finally led to his 

 resignation, which took effect in 1886. 



Dr. Hilgard's active labors, for nearly forty years, were chiefly 

 in connection with the development and administrative work 

 of the Survey, and here he did very important and valuable 

 service to science and to the country. He had charge of the con- 

 struction and verification of the standards of weights and meas- 

 ures, and was for some time engaged in preparing metric stan- 

 dards for distribution to the several States. He was also engaged 

 in researches and the discussion of the results in geodesy and in 

 terrestrial physics and in perfecting methods and instrumental 

 means connected with them. One of the most important pieces 

 of work with which he was connected was the determination of 

 transatlantic longitude in 1872 ; a result of this was to establish 

 an important correction to the longitude of Paris as reckoned 

 from Greenwich. A chart compiled by him giving the magnetic 

 declination over the United States for 1875 was issued in connec- 

 tion with the Coast Survey Report, and, also with a descriptive 

 article in this Journal (xix, 173). 



Professor Hilgard was one of the original members of the 

 National Academy of Sciences, and served for years as its Home 

 Secretary. He was made President of the American Associa- 

 tion for the Advancement of Science in 1874. 



