Cocculus Ferrandianus, Presl. Apparently confined to the Hawaiian Islands.

HOLOPEIRA CONCHOPHYLLA, Miers. Cocculus Ferrandianus, Seem. (non Gaud.) Fl. Vitiensis, and refers to specimens in herb. Hook. (Hillebrand) and Seemann's n. 2281.

Myonima umbellata, referred as a synonyme to Canthium lucidum, should, according to the specimens (ex Seemann, Fl. Vitiensis), be referred to a Straussia.

Under number 400, for S. Freyienetianum read S. Freycinetianum. Under number 312, insert (M. & B. 40); 324, insert (M. & B. 305); 489, insert (M. & B. 36).

After 422 insert 422a. EUXOLUS VIRIDIS, Moq. 1. c. p. 273. (M. & B. 67).

Five hundred and seventy-second Meeting.

October 9, 1866. MONTHLY MEETING.

The PRESIDENT in the chair.

Professor Horsford presented a communication on the popular doctrine that sunlight retards combustion.

Professor Henry presented a communication on the causes and physical nature of fogs, and on the means of warning vessels, befogged on our coasts, by sound-signals.

Five hundred and seventy-third Meeting.

November 14, 1866.-STATUTE MEETING.

The PRESIDENT in the chair.

The Corresponding Secretary read letters relative to exchanges; also letters from Professor Noah Porter of Yale College, Chief Justice Ira Perley of New Hampshire, and Dr. A. W. Chapman of Apalachicola, in acknowledgment of their election into the Academy as Associate Fellows.

The President called the attention of the Academy to the recent decease of Mr. Samuel Swett of the Resident Fellows. The President announced that since the last meeting Mr. George Peabody had founded an important institution for the

advancement of American Archæology and Ethnology, and had included the President of this Academy in the trust. He read the letter and deed of trust from Mr. Peabody, and suggested that they should be copied into the records.

Professor Agassiz spoke at length upon the great importance of this new establishment, and offered the following resolutions:

"Resolved, That the documents now presented by the President relative to the foundation by Mr. George Peabody of a Museum and Professorship of American Archæology and Ethnology be entered upon the records of the Academy.

"Resolved, That the Academy with much satisfaction recognizes the sagacity and liberality of Mr. Peabody in providing these means and inducements for the investigation of subjects of especial interest to us as Americans, and of universal interest to all inquirers into the nature of man and the records of his growth and development.

"Resolved, That the Academy gladly acknowledges, as among the duties of its President, those which devolve upon him as an ex officio trustee of Mr. Peabody's foundation."

The resolutions were unanimously adopted.

The Treasurer's accounts for the year ending at the last Annual Meeting, approved by the Auditing Committee, were received and ordered to be entered upon the record.

Professor Lovering as Chairman of the Committee of Publication moved a special appropriation of five hundred dollars to complete the publication of Dr. Storer's Memoir on the Fishes of Massachusetts; and the motion was referred to the Finance Committee.

The following gentlemen were elected members of the Academy:

Dr. James D. Whelpley, to be Resident Fellow in Class I. Section 3.

Dr. Henry W. Williams, to be Resident Fellow in Class II. Section 4.

Mr. John M. Batchelder, to be Resident Fellow in Class I. Section 4.

Mr. William Gray, to be Resident Fellow in Class III. Section 3.

Dr. James C. White, to be Resident Fellow in Class II. Section 3.

Mr. J. Eliot Cabot, to be Resident Fellow in Class III. Section 4.

Mr. William R. Ware, to be Resident Fellow in Class I. Section 4.

Dr. Frederic H. Hedge, to be Resident Fellow in Class III. Section 1.

Mr. Charles Dean, to be Resident Fellow in Class III. Section 3.

Dr. Isaac Ray of Philadelphia, to be Associate Fellow in Class III. Section 1.

Henry Sumner Maine, to be Foreign Honorary Member in Class III. Section 1, in place of the late Dr. Whewell.

Professor Peirce presented by title an investigation on "Linear Algebra."

Five hundred and seventy-fourth Meeting.

November 21, 1866. SPECIAL MEETING.

The PRESIDENT in the chair.

The President called the attention of the Academy to the recent decease of Rev. Dr. William Jenks of the Resident Fellows.

Dr. J. Bigelow read a paper on "Classical and Utilitarian Studies."

Five hundred and seventy-fifth Meeting.

December 11, 1866. MONTHLY MEETING.

The PRESIDENT in the chair.

The Corresponding Secretary read letters relative to exchanges.

Dr. Kneeland read a communication on certain fungoid parasites which grow from the bodies of insects.

Mr. G. W. Hill gave an account of the present state of the Lunar Theory.

Mr. T. S. Hunt presented some theoretical considerations in explanation of the chemical activity of substances in the "Nascent State."

Five hundred and seventy-sixth Meeting.

January 8, 1867.- MONTHLY MEETING.

The PRESIDENT in the chair.

The Corresponding Secretary read letters relating to exchanges; also an invitation to the members of this Academy from the Imperial Mineralogical Society of St. Petersburg, to attend the fiftieth anniversary of its foundation.

The following communication was presented :

On the Object and Method of Mineralogy. By T. STERRY HUNT, F. R. S.

Mineralogy, as popularly understood, holds an anomalous position among the natural sciences, and is by many regarded as having no claims to the rank of a distinct science, but as constituting a branch of chemistry. This secondary place is disputed by some mineralogists, who have endeavored to base a natural-history classification upon such characters as the crystalline form, hardness, and specific gravity of minerals. In systems of this kind, however, like those of Möhs and his followers, only such species as occur ready formed in nature are comprehended, and the great number of artificial species, often closely related to native minerals, are excluded. It may moreover be said, in objection to these naturalists, that in its wider sense the chemical history of bodies takes into consideration all those characters upon which the so-called natural systems of mineral classification are based. In order to understand clearly the question before us, we must first consider what are the real objects, and what the provinces, respectively, of mineralogy and of chemistry.

Of the three great divisions or kingdoms of nature, the classification of the vegetable gives rise to systematic botany, that of the animal to zoology, and that of the mineral to mineralogy, which has for its subject the natural history of all the forms of unorganized matter. The

relations of these to gravity, cohesion, heat, light, electricity, and magnetism belong to the domain of physics, while chemistry is the history of their relations to each other, and of their transformations under the influences of heat, light, and electricity. Chemistry is thus to mineralogy what biology is to organography, and the abstract sciences, physics and chemistry, must precede and form the basis of the concrete science, mineralogy. Many species are chiefly distinguishable by their chemical activities, and hence chemical characters must be greatly depended upon in mineralogical classification.

Chemical change implies disorganization, and all so-called chemical species are inorganic, that is to say, unorganized, and hence really belong to the mineral kingdom. In this extended sense mineralogy takes in not only the few metals, oxides, sulphides, silicates and other salts which are found in nature, but also all those which are the products of the chemist's skill. It embraces not only the few native resins and hydrocarbons, but all the bodies of the carbon series made known to us by the researches of modern chemistry.

The primary object of a natural classification, it must be remembered, is not, like that of an artificial system, to serve the purpose of determining species, or the convenience of the student, but so to arrange bodies in genera, orders, and classes as to satisfy most thoroughly natural affinities. Such a classification, in mineralogy, will be based upon a consideration of all the physical and chemical relations of bodies, and will enable us to see that the various properties of a species are not so many arbitrary signs, but the necessary results of its constitution. It will give for the mineral kingdom what the labors of great naturalists have already nearly attained for the vegetable and animal kingdoms.

Oken saw the necessity of thus enlarging the bounds of mineralogy, and in his Physiophilosophy attempted a mineralogical classification; but it is based upon fanciful and false analogies, with but little reference either to physical or chemical characters, and in the present state of our knowledge is valueless, except as an effort in the right direction, and an attempt to give to mineralogy a natural system. With similar views as to the scope of the science, and with far higher and juster conceptions of its method, Stallo, in his Philosophy of Nature, has touched the questions before us, and has attempted to show the significance of the relations of the metals to cohesion, gravity, light, and electricity, but has gone no further.

In approaching this great problem of classification we have to exam