ing such a work? Shall we wait till the history of the scienceand we are already behindhand shall become more developed ? Much that is now past is to be recalled; shall we wait till we can no longer trace the beginnings of the history? And on the other hand, shall we wait for the accumulation of matter, till we may start fullfledged into existence? But matter will never accumulate and remain unpublished; as it now increases, it will flow through various channels, and he who would study the history of astronomy among us, though as yet the task would be by no means impossible, would at length become more and more perplexed, and would lose one great advantage which our present plan would afford him.

We must not wait for matter to crowd upon us; we ought now to commence, and we are willing to labor hard and abide by the result.

Under these circumstances, I have thought it advisable to present the subject in this manner before those who take an interest in whatever relates to the progress of science among us. I have hastily thrown together these thoughts, and feeling the need of the countenance and coöperation of others, have ventured thus to urge the subject before them, and to leave it with them to say whether we shall go

on or not.

On motion of Prof. PEIRCE, referred to the following select Committee:

Dr. B. A. GOULD, JR., Prof. J. S. HUBBARD, Prof. JOHN H. C. COFFIN, SEARS C. WALKER, Esq., Prof. JOSEPH HENRY, Prof. A. D. BACHE, Lieut. M. F. MAURY, Lieut. C. H. DAVIS, Prof. BENJAMIN PEIRCE.

ON AN AMERICAN PRIME MERIDIAN. BY PROF. I. F. HOLTON.

THE establishment of a new Prime Meridian affecting all the charts, maps, and gazetteers published, or to be published, in any country, should not be attempted without due consideration. For a long time we have suffered an annoyance, on a most petty scale, from a foolish and futile attempt to reckon American longitude from some unestablished point in the city of Washington, not because it was the site of an Observatory, but merely because it was our National Capital. The abandonment of this attempt now, just when, for the first time, something might be done towards establishing it on a more rational basis, evinces a clear-sightedness as to the real interests and honor of our

nation from which we ought to take courage. For it is seen and acknowledged that the prime meridian is no honor to the place it passes through or from which it takes its name. So, too, it is a badge of honor rather than an honor in itself to the people who established it. If a Prime Meridian be established for convenience, and afterwards the scientific and commercial activity of the people make it a matter of importance to all other nations, it becomes a monument of that activity. But when such a Meridian is established, merely as a national distinction, it becomes a work of vanity, for, however we may value marks of distinction when fairly earned, no one counts it honorable to strive after them.

The Prime Meridian of Greenwich is a badge of honor to us; for we were in our fathers' loins when they established it, and our own commerce and science have aided in giving it its importance. It is ours as is King Alfred and Shakspeare — and while we hold to it, it is the only candidate for universal adoption. If we adhere to it but one century more, it will remain while the human race endures, the sole prime meridian, a trophy of the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon

race.

But it is now proposed to abandon it-to reckon the longitude of Washington as 12° 56′ E. instead of 77° 4′ W., and to keep this assumed longitude, even should we at length discover precisely the width of the Atlantic, and the true longitude from Greenwich. It is further proposed to discover some point exactly 12° 56′ W. of Washington, or as nearly 90° W. from Greenwich as possible, and on that point to establish- not an observatory - but a geodetic signal, which "will be useful for reference in the adjacent country, saving labor and time in fixing longitudes in its vicinity, and whose foundation appears to be peculiarly proper as a national monument."

Would not some elevated point in the everlasting hills of Missouri serve better for a landmark of longitude than any that could possibly be found in the alluvial country south of Wisconsin? And might not the field of New Orleans be a better site for a national monument than an arbitrary point in the city?

But we are compelled to admit the necessity of a fixed point from which to number our longitudes, so accurately ascertained among themselves, rather than leave them individually open to a correction of some seconds. There ought to be an American Prime Meridian. Let us inquire, then, where that meridian could best be located. Lieut. Davis's paper shows conclusively that it should not pass through

Washington. It shows also that wherever it must fall, it subjects both sea and land to serious inconveniences. It is even an evil to the continent on which it falls, making some of its longitudes East and others West. Had the French rested content with reckoning Paris as 20° E., or better still, at 30° E., a better prime meridian could not be desired. We may well desire, therefore, to avert from the turbid waters of Barataria Bay the confusion inseparable from a prime meridian. No country, city or people can derive any advantage, honoable or pecuniary, from this unenviable distinction, save only the observatory through which it may pass, and which is thereby relieved from correcting its observations for difference of longitude.

If, therefore, an American prime meridian is to be arbitrarily assumed, let it pass 77° 4' east of Washington. In this way it will pass through the town of Greenwich, and most probably through the very observatory, though we cannot hope that it will coincide with the axis of the Transit instrument.

To the practical navigator the American meridian will then be regarded as identical with that of Greenwich, and it is only when we speak of American longitudes with the highest degree of accuracy that we consider the two as differing by a small quantity, unknown both in amount and sign. In this way it is to be hoped that every real advantage of a new prime meridian will be secured every evil incident to it avoided our scientific community saved from a charge of national vanity our long-cherished claim to the meridian of Greenwich preserved, and its universality placed beyond all future contingency.

Prof. Holton's paper gave rise to an animated and protracted discussion, in which Prof. PEIRCE, Lieut. DAVIS, and Lieut. MAURY took part in favor of an American meridian, and Mr. G. P. BOND, Prof. LOVERING, and Prof. JOHNSON, took part against it.

Dr. HARE expressed his hope that there might be at some time a universal meridian.

Lieuts. DAVIS, and MAURY explained the views and motives of the Secretary of the Navy, the Hon. W. B. Preston, in inviting the opinions of the mathematicians and astronomers of the country upon this interesting question.

SECTION OF CHEMISTRY, MINERALOGY, AND METEOROLOGY.

J. H. WURTZ, Esq., in the Chair.

INVESTIGATION OF THE INTESTINAL FAT OF A LARGE SEA Turtle. BY DR. CHRISTIAN LINCK, Assistant in the Cambridge Laboratory.

A PORTION of the subcutaneous tissue of this animal was presented to me by Prof. Agassiz, with the request that I would make an investigation of the nature of its fat. One pound of the substance was repeatedly boiled with water, which yielded from its surface seven and a half ounces of fat, which was purified by fusing and washing it with water several times.

This fat had the consistency of hog's lard, and retained the strong fish-like smell that emanates from all parts of the animal. The color was a light brownish yellow. It easily saponified with a weak ley of caustic soda. This soap solution being supersaturated with sulphuric acid, was transferred into a glass retort, and two thirds of the liquid distilled off. The distilled liquid had the same odor as the distillate obtained from butter under analogous conditions. This liquid mixed with a quantity of baryta water, deposited during evaporation white flakes of the same appearance as the caprylate and capronate of baryta obtained in a similar way from butter. The quantity is apparently so small as not to admit of the isolation of the acid from it in the oily state.

Four ounces of the same fat were saponified, and treated as before; to the distillate a quantity of soda was added, and the whole evaporated to two ounces; this was supersaturated with sulphuric acid and one and a half ounces of liquid distilled over. This gave a decided butyric smell and reddened litmus paper strongly, a reaction destroyed, however, by the addition of a few drops of soda solution, indicating the quantity of volatile acid to be very small. Gottlieb has found precisely the same results in the fat of geese. The fat acids remaining on the surface of the decomposed soap liquor was collected, and treated repeatedly in the same manner as the original fat had been, in order to ascertain whether the formation of the volatile fat acids might not be owing to the reaction of the caustic alkali on one of the main constituents of the fat.

The distillate still possessed the smell of butyric acid, but less and less after each succeeding operation, so that most probably the volatile

acids were formed only during the first saponification, and in the succeeding operations, those parts only which adhered mechanically to the fat after distillation, were given off. The fishy smell of the fat seems to have no connection with the nature of the volatile fat acids, and the substance on which it depends, exists perhaps in no greater quantity than the odoriferous principles of many flowers, which have not yet been isolated.

The fat exposed to the dry distillation until two thirds had gone over, yielded a soft distillate, lighter colored than the original fat, from which emanated the strong and repugnant odor of acrolein, the common product of decomposition of glyceryl, the base which combined with fat acids constitutes animal fats.

This product of distillation was boiled with water for some time, then filtered through a wet filter and set aside. After twelve hours there were deposited crystalline flakes with the appearance of sebacic acid — the principal product of dry distillation of oleic acid.

A quantity of the original fat was saponified with oxide of lead, and the lead plaster digested with ether. Nearly the whole of the plaster proved soluble in this menstruum, showing the presence of a large quantity of oleic acid, the only fat acid whose leadsoap is soluble in ether. The oleic acid was prepared from that soap by decomposition of it with sulphuric acid. It presented the appearance of a brown oil, possessing the physical properties of crude oleic acid. It slightly coagulated when cooled with ice.

It remained now to search for the fixed, solid fat acids. Different methods were pursued, but the following proved the most satisfactory The mixture of fat acids obtained by decomposition of the original soap, was dissolved in boiling alcohol and set aside for crystallization, the mother-liquor separated by a filter, and the needles which remained purified by very oft repeated re-crystallizations, so that at last their point of fusion did not rise any higher, but remained stationary at 60° C. The product in such state of purity had completely the appearance of hydrated margaric acid, with which it also corresponded in its point of fusion. In this very tedious manner, and with a great loss of substance in the mother-liquors, a quantity of the acid was obtained sufficient for analysis. The soap separated by chloride of sodium, re-dissolved in water, and separated again by sulphate of soda, etc. Part of it was saponified with soda, thus a pure soda soap was obtained, and from it, by double decomposition with