440 



cult researches, the foundation of a splendid fortune, and few persons 

 have contributed more effectually, by their discoveries and exertions 

 to the promotion of those arts and manufactures which form the 

 foundation of the prosperity of a great commercial nation. 



The names of the Foreign members whom the Society has lost 

 during the last year are, Andre Marie Ampere and Antoine- 

 Laurent de Jussieu, both of them members of the Academie des 

 Sciences de France. 



Mons. Ampere was born at Lyon3 in 1775, and made his first 

 appearance in the scientific world in a short work which showed con- 

 siderable command of analysis, entitled Considerations sur la TMorie 

 MatMmatique du Jeu, in which the question of the safety of habitual 

 and indefinite play, either against a single person of greater fortune, 

 or indifferently against any number of persons, even when the game 

 is perfectly fair and equal, is discussed and solved, and its result ex- 

 hibited in a form full of warning to those by whom gaming is pur- 

 sued as an occupation, in which success or failure is considered as 

 the gift of fortune, and not the inevitable result of calculation. 

 M. Ampere was subsequently appointed Professor of the Poly- 

 technic School, and published memoirs on the integration of 

 partial differential equations, and on other subjects, which show 

 a profound knowledge of some of the most refined and difficult 

 artifices of analysis : to him likewise we are indebted for me* 

 moirs on the Mathematical Theories of Electro-magnetic Cur- 

 rents, which are remarkable for the skill and ingenuity with which 

 the powers of analysis are brought to bear on subjects apparently 

 the most remote from their operation. His inquiry into the equa- 

 tion of Fresnel's wave surface is more remarkable as an example 

 of resolute perseverance than of success, and his last work, on the 

 Philosophy of the Sciences, showed him to be much less happy 

 in his metaphysical, than in his physical and analytical speculations. 

 M. Ampere was a man of great simplicity of character, and his ex- 

 traordinary fits of absence of mind were not unfrequently made the 

 subject of much innocent amusement. He took no part in the cabals 

 and jealousies which too frequently disturb the peace of the world 

 of science, and he was universally respected and beloved for his 

 great integrity and the kindness of his affections. 



Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu, a name singularly illustrious in the 

 annals of botanical science, was born at Lyons in 1748. He was 

 nephew to the great Bernard de Jussieu, under whose auspices he was 

 first introduced into the scientific world of Paris, and appointed, at a 

 very early age, demonstrator of botany in the Jardin du Roi. After 

 this appointment, though originally destined for the profession of 

 medicine, he devoted himself almost exclusively to the study of 

 botany, more especially with a view to the establishment and de- 

 velopement of the natural system of arrangement, a very bold and 

 successful approximation to which had been effected by his uncle in 

 the distribution of the plants in the Garden of the Trianon.* He 



* This arrangement, made in 1759, is given by his nephew at the conclusion of 



