•2-1 3 Miscellaneous Intelligence. 



Among Mr. Hunt's various papers the following have prom- 

 inence : his Presidential address before the American Association 

 for the Advancement of Science in 1871, in which are the germs 

 of several of his later publication; his address at the Centennial 

 of Chemistry in 1874, on "A Century's Progress of Chemistry;" 

 "The Chemistry of the Primeval Earth ;" "The Chemistry of Nat- 

 ural "Waters;" "The origin of Crystalline Rocks — the Crcnitic 

 Hypothesis;" " The Geological History of Serpentine." Nearly 

 all bear the impress of an able but speculative mind, well stored 

 with knowledge, but not well enough supplied and weighted with 

 geological facts where the subject has a geological bearing, and 

 not always capable of reading rightly the opinions of others 

 when they differed from his own. His late views on the Taconic 

 question have been sufficiently discussed in recent volumes of this 

 Journal. His published volumes are : Chemical and Geological 

 Essays, 1874, 1878; Azoic Rocks, 1878; Mineral Physiology 

 and Physiography, 1886; a New Basis for Chemistry, 1887; 

 "Mineralogy according to a Natural System," 1891. 



Dr. Hunt has the credit of bringing before the American Asso- 

 ciation for the Advancement of Science in 1876, the plan for an 

 International Geological Congress, the fifth meeting of which 

 was held in Washington the past year. At the Bologna meet- 

 ing in 1881, he was one of the twenty Vice-Presidents. He was 

 made a fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1859, and a 

 member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1873 ; and in 

 1881 he received from Cambridge, England, the degree of LL.D. 



Sir George Biddell Airt, for many years Astronomer- 

 Royal of Great Britain, died on January 7, in his ninety-first 

 year. He was graduated at Cambridge as Senior Wrangler in 

 1823, three years later he was made Lucasian Professor of Math- 

 ematics, and in 1828 Plumian Professor of Astronomy; his 

 appointment as Astronomer-Royal was made in 1835. His scien- 

 tific contributions in the fields of mathematics, physics and 

 -astronomy, commencing in 1824, have been numerous and of high 

 merit, and his labors in connection with the Royal Observatory 

 of Greenwich, as well in its development as in his personal 

 scientific work, gave him a position of rare eminence. Few 

 scientific men have the privilege of completing so long a career, 

 and one so rich in profit to science and so full of personal honor. 



John Couch Adams, Professor of Astronomy and Geometry 

 at Cambridge, died on the 21st of January, two weeks after the 

 •death of his distinguished fellow astronomer, Sir George Airy. 

 He was born June 5, 1S19, graduated as Senior Wrangler at Cam- 

 bridge in 1843, and in 1845 his mathematical discussion of the 

 irregularities in the motion of Uranus led him to the conclusion as 

 to the existence of an outer planet not yet observed — a result 

 reached independently by Leverrier the following year and con- 

 firmed by the discovery of Neptune by Galle in 1846. With this 

 early brilliant work his name will be always connected, but hardly 

 less important were his later labors carried on actively until 

 interrupted by ill health a year or two before his death. 



