﻿326 Miscellaneous Intelligence. 



of official cares, is thus putting forward this great work with 

 renewed vigor and advantage. a. g. 



6. Notice Biographique sur Alphonse Lavallee ; par M. 

 Henry L. de Vilmorin. pp. 46, 8vo. — A very interesting ac- 

 count of a very interesting man and of his work, so suddenly and 

 sadly cut short. It is an address to the National Agricultural 

 Society of France, of which Lavallee was a leading member and 

 an officer. a. g. 



III. Miscellaneous Scientific Intelligence. 



1. The Astronomical Journal. — In a printed circular Dr. Gould 

 announces his desire to re-establish the Astronomical Journal, 

 which was suspended at the close of its sixth volume, shortly after 

 the beginning of the war. He proposes to carry out the plan as 

 soon as a sufficient number of subscriptions has been received to 

 meet half the estimated expenses. 



The Astronomical Journal is to be devoted to the advancement, 

 rather than the diffusion, of knowledge, and its numbers will be 

 issued at irregular intervals, although it is hoped to complete a 

 volume annually. The price is $5.00 for the volume of twenty- 

 four numbers, with table of contents and index. 



Those disposed to subscribe are requested to notify him at 

 Cambridge, Mass., as early as may be convenient. The Journal 

 should have great success. 



2. The Moorts Surface. — Captain John Ericsson has, in Nature 

 of July 15th (p. 248), a paper well worked out, aiming to prove 

 that the rims of the great craters of the moon are made of ice, 

 through the freezing by the intense cold of the surface, of vapors 

 of water rising from the pits. He alludes to a paper of his read 

 before the American Academy of Sciences in 1869, in which he 

 dissented from Herschel's view that the heat of the moon on the 

 side toward the sun exceeded that of boiling water, and said that 

 " nothing but the assumption of extreme cold offers a satisfactory 

 explanation of the absence of any gaseous envelope round a 

 planetary body, which, on account of its near proximity cannot 

 vary much from the earth as regards its composition." In the 

 following number of Nature, Mr. G. H. Darwin states, in a brief 

 note, that in May, 1884, Mr. Peal, of Silbsagar, in Assam, who 

 has studied the moon's surface with great attention, sent him a 

 paper in which he maintained views closely resembling those of 



» Captain Ericsson ; to whom he replied suggesting that " it was 

 difficult to admit the existence of ice on the moon's surface with- 

 out a layer of water vapor over it, and that the telescope proves 

 that if such vapor exists it is only in exceedingly small quantities." 

 Mr. Darwin presents the note simply to draw attention to the 

 correspondence, not saying that he holds still the opinion he then 

 expressed. 



.3. American Association for the Advancement of Science. — 

 The thirty-fifth meeting of the Association opened at Buffalo 



