246 Obituary. 



him for his work as a clergyman, he made a voyage to the 

 Hawaiian Islands in October, 1845, and the following year made 

 observations on the volcano of Kilauea which led him to the 

 announcement of a principle in volcanic action before unrecog- 

 nized, that of "the bodily upheaving of the lower floor of the 

 crater (an area two and a half miles long and two-thirds of a mile 

 in mean breadth), by subterranean forces," to a height above its 

 level six years before of at least three hundred feet. From 1847 

 to 1850 he was in California, and during this interval — that in 

 which the discovery of gold was made — several notes by him on 

 products of the gold region appeared in this Journal. In 1857, 

 Mr. Lyman was appointed Professor of Industrial Mechanics and 

 Physics in the Sheffield Scientific School. In 1870, on a division 

 of the professorship, the title was changed to Sheffield Professor 

 of Astronomy and Physics. Papers by him have been published 

 in this Journal from time to time on astronomical and physical 

 subjects. For several years Professor Lyman held the position of 

 President of the Connecticut Academy of the Arts and Sciences. 

 He leaves a son and two daughters. 



John Huntington Ceane Coffin. — Professor Coffin, the 

 veteran mathematician and astronomer, died at Washington in 

 January last, in his seventy-fifth year. He was born at Wis- 

 casset, Maine, Sept. 15, 1815, was graduated at Bowdoin College 

 in 1834, and was made Professor of Mathematics in the United 

 States Navy in 1836. He served at sea and in nautical surveys 

 until the time when the United States Naval Observatory was 

 ready for active work. He was then detailed for duty in that 

 institution, where Jan., 1845, he took charge of the Mural Circle. 

 He gave his time exclusively to that instrument till 1851, when 

 his eyes began to fail owing to the severe usage to which they 

 had been subjected. He prepared the descriptions and discus- 

 sions of the work with the Mural Circle, in the Washington 

 Observations 1846-9. In 1853 he was ordered to duty at 

 the Naval Academy, at Annapolis where he was engaged in 

 instruction until 1866. In this year Professor Winlock was made 

 director of Harvard College Observatory, and Professor Coffin 

 succeeded him as Superintendent of the " American Ephemeris 

 and Nautical Almanac." This peculiarly important office he filled 

 for eleven years. Among his other contributions to astronomy 

 was a memoir on the total eclipse of the sun, August, 1869. He 

 was one of the original members of the National Academv of Sci- 

 ences, and for several years was its treasurer. He received the 

 degree of LL.D., from Bowdoin College fifty years from his grad- 

 uation in Arts. He was a man of rare simplicity of character, 

 kindliness of disposition, and devotion to truth. 



Pev. Stephen J. Pekry, S. J. — Astronomy has sustained a 

 serious loss in the death of the genial and energetic Director of 

 the observatory, at Stonyhurst. Father Perry had gone to the 

 Salut Isles to observe the recent solar eclipse. The photographs 

 were successfully taken, but he from exposure was taken ill of 

 dysentery and died at sea five days after the eclipse. 



