Notes

Abstract

EUROPEAN science has sustained a terrible loss during the past week. Monsieur Dumas, the venerable Perpetual Secretary of the French Academy of Sciences, died at Cannes on the nth inst. at exactly the age of the century. Old as the great chemist was, his death will be felt as a real and serious loss to French science, for up to the last he took an active interest in all its doings. We gave in vol. xxi. so full a biography from the masterly pen of Prof. Hofmann of Berlin, that it is unnecessary to go over the ground again. We may, however, attempt in a future number to appreciate to some extent the position of Dumas in the chemistry of the past sixty years. The funeral took place at Mont Parnasse Cemetery on Tuesday, when MM. Bertrand, D'Haussonville, and others delivered addresses at the grave. The sitting of the French Academy of Sciences on Monday was postponed after the reading of an address by M. Rolland, the president, who praised M. Dumas for the talent and impartiality he exhibited as Perpetual Secretary of the Academy.