Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by GOULD AND LINCOLN, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts. NOTES BY THE EDITOR ON THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE FOR THE YEAR 1861, THE fifteenth meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science was appointed to be held at Nashville, Tennessee, April, 1861; but, owing to the breaking out of the civil war, the meeting was necessarily postponed to some future and more auspicious occasion. The thirty-first annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science was held at Manchester, September, 1861, Mr. William Fairbairn, the eminent engineer, being in the chair. This meeting appears to have exceeded all others before held, in the numbers present, in the amount of general and local subscriptions (upon which the efficiency of the Association in promoting investigations mainly depends), in the value and number of the papers read, in the interest of the personal discussion, and in the excellence and variety of the evening discourses. Among the lectures of special interest was one by Professor Airy, the Astronomer Royal, "On the Solar Eclipse of 1860," and one by Prof. Miller, on the recent remarkable researches of Bunsen and Kirchhoff on 66 Spectrum Analysis;' abstracts of both being given in this volume. The subjects which commanded most general attention, however, among those brought before the Association, were the "Origin and Antiquity of Man" and "Iron-plated Ships." The next meeting was appointed to be held at Cambridge, when the Prince of Wales is expected to take the chair. From the annual address of the President, which was mainly a review of the recent progress of science, we make the following extracts: "Were I to enlarge on the relation of the achievements of science to the comforts and enjoyments of man, I should have to refer to the present epoch as one of the most important in the history of the world. At no former period did science contribute so much to the uses of life and the wants of society. And in doing this it has only been fulfilling MECHANICS, USEFUL ARTS, NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, CHEMISTRY, ASTRONOMY, GEOLOGY, ZOOLOGY, BOTANY, MINERALOGY, METEOROLOGY, GEOGRAPHY, ANTIQUITIES, ETC. TOGETHER WITH NOTES ON THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE DURING THE YEAR 1861; A LIST OF RECENT SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS; OBITUARIES OF EMINENT SCIENTIFIC MEN, ETC. EDITED BY DAVID A. WELLS, A. M., AUTHOR OF PRINCIPLES OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, PRINCIPLES OF CHEMISTRY, SCIENCE OF COMMON THINGS, ETC. BOSTON: GOULD AND LINCOLN, 59 WASHINGTON STREET. NEW YORK: SHELDON AND COMPANY. LONDON: TRUBNER & CO. 1865. |