The following gentlemen were elected Fellows of the Academy,a printed list of nominees having been sent to all Voting Fellows with the notice of the April meeting, in accordance with Chapter III., Article 3 of the Statutes:

In Class I., Section 1 (Mathematics and Astronomy):

George David Birkhoff, of Cambridge; Julian Lowell Coolidge, of Cambridge; Edward Vermilye Huntington, of Cambridge. In Class I., Section 2 (Physics):

Henry Crew, of Evanston, Ill.; Norton Adams Kent, of Cambridge.

In Class I., Section 3 (Chemistry):

Arthur Dehon Little, of Brookline; William Albert Noyes, of Urbana, Ill.

In Class I., Section 4 (Technology and Engineering):

Harold Pender, of Boston.

In Class II., Section 4 (Medicine and Surgery):

Henry Asbury Christian, of Boston; Frank Burr Mallory, of Brookline; Edward Hall Nichols, of Boston.

In Class III., Section 1 (Theology, Philosophy and Jurisprudence):

Frederick Perry Fish, of Brookline; William Lawrence, of Boston; Henry Newton Sheldon, of Boston; Moorfield Storey, of Boston.

In Class III., Section 2 (Philology and Archaeology):

Charles Hall Grandgent, of Cambridge; Charles Burton Gulick, of Cambridge; Hans Carl Gunther von Jagemann, of Cambridge; James Richard Jewett, of Cambridge; Edward Kennard Rand, of Cambridge.

In Class III., Section 3 (Political Economy and History): Charles Jesse Bullock, of Cambridge; Davis Rich Dewey, of Cambridge; Edwin Francis Gay, of Cambridge; Albert Bushnell Hart, of Cambridge; Charles Homer Haskins, of Cambridge; William Bennett Munro of Cambridge.

In Class III., Section 4 (Literature and the Fine Arts): George Whitefield Chadwick, of Boston; Samuel McChord Crothers, of Cambridge; Franklin Bowditch Dexter, of New Haven, Conn.; Arthur Foote, of Brookline; Daniel Chester French, of

Cambridge; Robert Grant, of Boston; John Torrey Morse, Jr., of Boston; Bela Lyon Pratt, of Boston; George Edward Woodberry, of Beverly.

The following communication was given:

Dr. Theodore Lyman. "A Journey in the Highlands of Siberia." The following papers were presented by title:-

"Passivity of Iron under Boiler Conditions." By H. G. Byers and F. T. Vores. Presented by H. P. Talbot.

"Relation between the Magnetic Field and the Passive State of Iron." By H. G. Byers and S. C. Langdon. Presented by H. P. Talbot.

Contributions from the Gray Herbarium. New Series XLI. I. A Redisposition of the Species heretofore referred to Leptosyne. II. A Revision of Encelia and some Related Genera. By S. F. Blake.

Contributions from the Gray Herbarium. New Series XLII. I: A Key to the Genera of the Compositae Eupatoricae. By B. L. Robinson. II: Revisions of Alomia, Ageratum, Ctenopappus and Oxylobus. By B. L. Robinson. III: Some new Combinations required by the International Rules. By C. A. Weatherby. IV: On the Graminae collected by Professor Morton C. Peck, in British Honduras, 1905-1907. By F. F. Hubbard. V: Diagnoses and Transfers among the Spermatophytes. By B. L. Robinson.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES.

ROBERT AMORY.

ROBERT AMORY A. M., M. D., was born in Boston, May 3, 1842, and died in Nahant, Aug. 27, 1910. He was graduated from Harvard College in 1863 and from the Harvard Medical School in 1866. After the medical degree was conferred he continued his studies for a year in Europe and while in Paris became especially interested in the experimental study of the action of drugs.

He began the practice of medicine in Brookline and soon opened a small laboratory for experimental research in the stable adjoining his residence in Longwood. He then interested a number of medical students in physiological investigations, especially with reference to the action of medicines. Dr. Edward H. Clarke, professor of materia medica in the Harvard Medical School encouraged his undertaking and recommended his appointment to a lectureship on the physiological action of drugs. Dr. Amory later opened a larger and more convenient laboratory in La Grange St., Boston, for the use of his students and for the benefit of those physicians who were interested in experimental methods of biological study. A centre thus was established for advanced students of medical problems and the laboratory became the meeting place of the Boston Society of Medical Sciences of which Dr. Amory was one of the founders. During this early period of his career were published his researches on hydrocyanic acid, caffein and thein, absinth, the bromide of potassium and ammonium and on nitrous oxide. In connection with Dr. S. G. Webber he published a paper on veratrum viride and veratria, and, with Dr. E. H. Clarke, a monograph on the physiological and therapeutical action of the bromide of potassium and the bromide of ammonium. His reputation as a scientific investigator along physiological lines thus being established he was appointed in 1872 lecturer on physiology at the Medical School of Maine and in the following year was made professor of physiology in that institution. At this time he translated the lectures in physiology given by Professor Küss of the university

of Strasbourg. He also accepted the editorship of the section on poisons in the third edition of the Medical Jurisprudence of Wharton and Stillé. In connection with Professor E. S. Wood, and later with Dr. R. L. Emerson he edited the chapters on poisons in the subsequent editions of this treatise.

He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1871 and in 1875 presented a communication on photographs of the solar spectrum which he had made with the assistance of Mr. J. G. Hubbard who then was working in his laboratory. Communications also were presented by him on the action of dry, silver bromide collodion to light rays of different frangibility and on the theory of absorption bands in relation to photography and chemistry.

In 1874 he resigned his professorship and devoted his time largely to medical practice and to such laboratory studies as his various obligations would permit. He was appointed the medical examiner of his district, held various positions in the medical staff of the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia and in 1880 was President of the National Decennial Convention for the Revision of the United States Pharmacopoeia. During this period he contributed a paper on the haematinic properties of dialyzed iron, with Dr. G. K. Sabine made a study of an epidemic of typhoid fever in Brookline and, in 1886, published a treatise on Electrolysis and its therapeutical and surgical use.

For a number of years he had been in the habit of spending his summers in Bar Harbor, Me., where he also practised medicine. Then having become interested in the telephone he was persuaded to withdraw from medical practice and to devote himself to commercial affairs. He identified himself with telephone, electricity and gas, and became President and Manager of the Brookline Gas Company, from which he retired in 1898.

Dr. Amory, while engaged in scientific pursuits, was an earnest, diligent worker, with high ideals. He gave liberally of his time, the freedom of his laboratory and apparatus for the encouragement of others. He was a pioneer in the introduction into this country of the study of the physiological action of drugs by experiments on animals and apart from his individual researches thus contributed to the advancement of exact knowledge.

R. H. FITZ.

ABBOT LAWRENCE ROTCH.

ABBOTT LAWRENCE ROTCH was born in Boston, January 6, 1861, the son of Benjamin Smith and Anna Bigelow (Lawrence) Rotch. He was graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (S.B.) in 1884. In 1891 Harvard recognized the importance of the work which he had already accomplished by bestowing upon him the honorary degree of A.M. From 1888 to 1891, and again from 1902 to 1906, he held the appointment of assistant in meteorology at Harvard, a position which involved no teaching and in which no salary was paid. In 1906 he was appointed professor of meteorology, an honor which he prized very highly, and which gave him the position on the teaching staff of the university to which he was in every way fully entitled. He was the first professor of meteorology who has occupied that position at Harvard, and he served in this professorship without pay. In the year 1908-09, at the request of the department of geology and geography, he generously put the splendid instrumental equipment and library of Blue Hill Observatory at the service of the university, by offering a research course ("Geology 20f") to students who were competent to carry on investigations in advanced meteorology. This action on the part of Professor Rotch gave Harvard a position wholly unique among the universities of the United States. It brought about a close affiliation, for purposes of instruction and of research, between the university and one of the best-equipped meteorological observatories in the world. To his work as instructor Professor Rotch gladly gave of his time and of his means. He fully realized the unusual advantages which he was thus enabled to offer those students who were devoting themselves to the science of meteorology, and the experience of the men who had the privilege of his advice and help in the work at Blue Hill shows clearly how much they profited by this opportunity. Only a short time before his death he had expressed the wish to bring about a still closer connection, for purposes of instruction, between the university and Blue Hill Observatory. He thus showed his appreciation of the importance of the new field of work which he had undertaken.

While thus planning still further usefulness for his observatory; in the midst of a life singularly active; with an ever-widening sphere of scientific influence and a constantly increasing importance of his contributions to meteorology, Professor Rotch died suddenly in Boston on April 7, 1912, in the fifty-second year of his age. His wife, who was