424 
WILLIAM BOWER TAYLOR. 
Anthropological societies, favoring a scheme of consolidation 
or union of the scientific societies of Washington, an event 
which, after a lapse of thirteen years, has only recently been 
in some degree accomplished. 
In February, 1883, a Mathematical Section of the Philo¬ 
sophical Society was organized, of which he became one of 
the leading spirits, taking part in every meeting, and on 
March 24,1886, he was elected its chairman. On the 23d of 
October, 1886, he was elected to the general committee of the 
Society, which position he held until his death, giving to 
every detail of business the same attention he did to solving 
the greatest problem of nature. 
To the Journal of the Franklin Institute, of which society 
he was long a member, he contributed, in 1876, a paper on 
“ Physics of the Ether,” consisting principally of a review of 
a work by S. Tolver Preston, of London, as well as numer¬ 
ous brief notices or reviews. In the American Journal of 
Science and Art , New Haven, he published a paper in 1876 on 
“ Recent Researches in Sound,” and in 1885 “ On the Crump¬ 
ling of the Earth’s Crust.” 
His “ Kinetic Theories of Gravitation ” was published by 
the Smithsonian Institution in 1876. An editorial in the 
American Journal of Science refers to this work as “ a valuable 
historical resume of the various attempts that have been 
made by the most eminent philosophers to account for the 
phenomena of gravitative attraction from the time of New¬ 
ton to the present day, concluded by a vigorous criticism of 
the leading theories, in which the author, passing over the 
consideration of the statical method of explaining gravita¬ 
tion by pressure, finds that kinetic systems are essentially of 
two classes—the hypothesis of emissions or corpuscles, and 
the hypothesis of fluid undulations—and proceeds to show 
that neither form of either hypothesis can satisfy the two 
Newtonian conditions of a scientific theory—verity and 
sufficiency.” 
He became a member of the American Philosophical So¬ 
ciety of Philadelphia on the 19th of October, 1877, but does 
not appear to have contributed to its transactions. 
