1900 - 1 .] 
Meetings of the Society. 
439 
philology, and philosophy, it has, throughout almost its whole 
existence, counted among its members an extraordinary number of 
the most renowned and fruitful investigators. It has successfully 
carried on vast and erudite labours which have made all scholars 
its debtors, and stimulated numerous researches of great national 
and general utility. 
This Society sincerely sympathises with the Royal Academy of 
Prussia in the losses which it has sustained in recent years through 
the deaths of von Helmholtz, of von Hofmann, of Du Bois- 
Reymond, of Ernst Curtius, of Waitz, and of Wattenbach, 
and other eminent and honoured members of the Academy ; while 
it recalls with satisfaction that it has counted, and still counts, 
among its own Honorary Fellows, members of the illustrious 
Academy. 
The Royal Society of Edinburgh hopes that the Academy may 
have continually increasing prosperity, and that all its labours may 
contribute to the glory of the German Empire and the enlighten- 
ment and progress of humanity. 
Our Representatives reported that they were hospitably received, 
and had the honour of lunching with the German Emperor. 
Mr Charles Piazzi Smyth has bequeathed a sum calculated to 
amount to about <^10,000, to be ultimately administered by this 
Society, but in the meantime to be held in trust for certain 
beneficiaries, and subject to their life interest, and on the decease 
of these beneficiaries, the above mentioned sum to be held in trust 
by the Society, whereof the annual income is to be employed — 
(1) in printing, at a cost of about £600, his spectroscopic MSS. ; 
and (2) in assisting or promoting, at an interval of every ten or 
twenty years, an exceptional expedition for the study of some 
particular branch of astronomical spectroscopy in the purer air of 
In the name of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 
(Signed) Kelvin, President. 
P. G. Tait, Secretary. 
March 9th, 1900. 
