PROCEEDINGS OF THE MEETING. 87 
tant law of the interference of the rays of light; he re-con¬ 
structed the same mathematical formulas for the application 
of that law to various phenomena, and he announced these re¬ 
searches as new, in a memoir read before the French Academy. 
One of the members of that eminent body*, better acquainted 
with the progress of optics than the writer of the memoir, 
happily preserved an author, to whose original and profound 
researches the science has been so largely indebted, from 
printing as his own the celebrated discoveries long before 
published by another philosopher; but had this information 
been earlier acquired, it would have saved all the time and 
labour which were lost in a retrograde inquiry. Even four 
years after this, when general attention had been drawn to 
the subject, and the prize offered by the Academy for the 
best Memoir on the diffraction of light was adjudged to 
M. Fresnel, the following animadversions were made by the 
Reporter f on the unsuccessful competitor, whom he neverthe¬ 
less represents as an experienced physical inquirer (‘physicien 
exerce ’). ‘ L’auteur parait n’avoir connu ni les travaux dont 
on est redevable au Dr. Thomas Young, ni le memoire que 
M. Fresnel avait insere en 1816 dans les Annales de Chimie 
et de Physique : aussi la partie de son travail qui se rapporte 
aux influences que les rayons de la lumiere exercent ou semblent 
exercer les uns sur les autres en se melant, loin de rien ajouter 
a ce qui etait deja connu, renferme plusieurs erreurs evidentes.” 
“ Having thus entrusted to the Sub-Committees, Gentlemen, 
the most active share in advancing their respective sciences, and 
considered them as the instruments by which, through the 
medium of the General Committee, the impulse of the Asso¬ 
ciation must be principally directed, we recommend that they 
should not he dissolved with the Meeting at which they have 
been appointed, hut continue in action till the Society re-assembles 
in the following year. We do not presume that the persons 
who may happen to compose them, far removed as they may 
be from each other, may often have it in their powder to meet 
in the interval; but we conceive that they will feel themselves 
engaged individually to keep the objects, which they have 
agreed to forward, in their view, and that the correspondence' 
which they may be induced to maintain between themselves, 
and with the Officers of the Association, may be highly con¬ 
ducive to that combined exertion, the introduction of which into 
science would save much labour and ensure a better progress. 
“ The appointments to the higher offices of the Society, 
* M. Arago. f Rapport lu a 1’Academie 15 Mars, 1819, par M. Arago. 
