after the lapse of more than thirty years, have not been superseded by any others of more practical value. The most frequent cause of explosion was found to be the sudden generation of steam from allowing the water to become too low, and its subsequent contact with the overheated sides of the boiler. Other assigned causes, such as the generation of gas from the decomposition of water, or the dispersion of water in the form of spray through superheated steam, were successively disproved.

Early elected into the American Philosophical Society, Professor Bache was then associated with Hare, Espy, and other investigators. Erecting for the purpose an observatory in the yard of his dwelling, and with the aid of his wife and his pupil, afterwards his successor, Professor Frazer, he accurately determined, for the first time in this country, the periods of the daily variation of the magnetic needle, and afterwards, the connection of the fitful variations of the direction of the magnetic force with the appearances of the aurora borealis. He also, in connection with Mr. Espy, made a minute survey of the relative change of position of the trees and other objects upturned by a tornado which passed over New Brunswick, New Jersey; and deduced the fact that the tornado was a progressive and ascending column of rarefied air, to which objects at a distance on either side of the track were drawn; and not a horizontal rotation at the surface, which would tend to throw them outward. In connection with Professor Courtenay he made a series of determinations of the magnetic dip at various places in the United States. Terrestrial magnetism was with him a favorite subject, to which he continued to make valuable contributions at intervals during his life. He was also interested in the phenomena of heat; and he was the first to show, contrary to the generally received opinion, that the radiation, and consequently the absorption, of dark heat is not affected by color.

It should be noticed that these investigations were prosecuted in the intervals of time not occupied by his duties as Professor in the University, into which his main strength was heartily thrown, and which absorbed several hours a day, nor claimed by committees of the Franklin Institute and the Philosophical Society. He was enabled to execute these multifarious labors, and to establish his character for promptitude in all his engagements, by rigid system and an exact allotment of his time. He thus found opportunity for all his duties, and, among them, to attend to the claims of friendship and society.

Professor Bache had just attained the thirtieth year of his age when, in 1836, the Trustees of the Girard College for Orphans, preparatory to organizing that nobly-endowed charity, determined to select a suitable person as President, and to send him abroad to study the organization and methods of instruction of similar institutions in Europe. The eyes of the community being with one accord turned to him, he was prevailed upon to accept this important position, and with lingering regret for the scientific pursuits from which he was likely to be separated to turn his attention and powers of administration in a new direction. He visited Europe under the most favorable circumstances for becoming intimately acquainted with its scientific and educational institutions; he devoted two years to the work, and, on his return, embodied the results in his well-known Report to the Trustees of Girard College. This report fills a large 8vo. volume, and is an almost exhaustive exposition of the systems of education in use at the time in the schools of England, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, the facts all founded on personal inspection, and recorded on ⚫ the spot with his habitual regard to entire accuracy; and the practical inferences and pregnant suggestions with which it abounds show how thoroughly he had entered into a new line of inquiries.

He was now ready to commence the organization of the College; but this being deferred by the Trustees, Professor Bache, desirous of turning the knowledge he had acquired to immediate practical account, offered his services gratuitously to the municipal authorities of Philadelphia, and entered upon the organization of a system of public education for that city on an improved basis. At the end of a year, finding the Trustees of Girard College still unprepared to open the institution, he declined the salary while yet retaining the office of President, and devoted his time mainly to the organization of the schools, now accepting from the city the salary needful for his support, but much smaller than that he relinquished.

In 1842, having successfully established what was regarded as the best system of combined free education which had at that time been adopted in this country, and Girard College still remaining in a statical condition, he resigned his connection with it, and, yielding to solicitations of the Trustees of the University, returned to his former chair of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry. He could now resume the favorite pursuit of his life, the cultivation of physical science, which, however, he had never wholly abandoned. While abroad,

with a set of portable instruments, he kept up a series of magnetical observations at selected points, with the view of accurately ascertaining the relative strength of the magnetic force in Europe and America, by comparison with parallel observations made in this country. He had also engaged in the combined enterprise, proposed, and furthered by the British Association, to determine the fluctuation of the magnetical and meteorological elements of the globe by contemporaneous observations at many widely separated stations. For this he established an Observatory at Girard College, which was equipped with instruments by the Trustees, and supported by the American Philosophical Society and several liberal citizens. The observations here made, which were kept up, at intervals of one and two hours, night and day for five years, form a rich mine of statistics from which, down to the last two years of his life, he continued to draw interesting series of results without exhausting the material.

Before he

A new epoch in Professor Bache's life now approached. was well settled in his old position at the University, in November, 1843, upon the death of Mr. Hassler, he was called to the charge of the United States Coast Survey, of which for about twenty years he was the efficient and distinguished head. His education at West Point, his well-proved skill in investigation, his thorough familiarity with the principles and details of applied science, all the acquisitions and experience of his previous life, and, not least, his placid and even temper, urbane deportment, exquisite tact, and executive ability, all conspired to his eminent fitness for the place, and to the achievement of the immense development and complete success of this great national undertaking in his hands. We cannot enter here into the history of the United States Coast Survey, intimately connected as it is with that of its late superintendent. It must suffice to say, that when Professor Bache took charge of it, the survey was in its infancy, had touched upon only four or five hundred miles of the Atlantic coast, was subject to misapprehension, annually assailed by ignorant prejudice, and in danger of being suspended or abolished. Before he died, it had extended its lines over the whole coast of the national domain, upon both oceans, from the Bay of Fundy to the Rio Grande, and from San Diego to Puget Sound; had conquered unjust prejudice, silenced opposition, and now passes into the charge of our associate the present incumbent, firmly established as one of the bureaus of the Executive Government.

The importance of the survey, always appreciated by the mariner, was recently impressed upon the general public, by the essential service which it rendered during the war of the rebellion. Its accurate charts and sailing directions guided our squadrons along the Southern coast; its officers accompanied and piloted them in the attack upon every stronghold; the superintendent himself was personally called into frequent consultations over plans of attack or defence; besides serving upon an important confidential commission, to which various projects for improving the art of war were referred, and also as a member of that great voluntary association for the relief of imminent wants and mitigation of the soldier's suffering, the Sanitary Commission. Indeed Mr. Bache may be ranked among the victims of the service; for it was when, overwhelmed with other public labors, he planned, at the request of the Governor of the State, a line of defences for his native city of Philadelphia, and was personally superintending their construction, that his health gave way under the first indications of the cerebral disease which not long afterwards arrested his labors, gradually and peacefully withdrew him from the outer world, and nearly three years afterwards terminated his invaluable life. He died on the 17th of February, 1867, in the sixty-first year of his age.

The amount and value of Mr. Bache's labors and public services would be much under-estimated if we omitted to state that he was likewise, while at the head of the Coast Survey, the Superintendent of Weights and Measures, in which capacity he completed the work, begun by Mr. Hassler, of constructing accurate standards for distribution among the several States of the Union; — that he was one of the Commission appointed to examine the condition of the Lighthouses of the United States, bore a leading part in the organization of the admirable system now in operation, and continued to be an influential member of the Lighthouse Board in which the original Commission was merged; that he was the President of the National Academy of Sciences recently chartered by Congress; and, finally, that he was one of the Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, named in the act of incorporation in 1846, and was continued in this important trust by successive re-elections until his death. To him probably more than to any other member of the Board the credit is due of shaping the policy of the establishment, of retrieving initial mistakes, and of securing the appropriation of the income of this most important trust mainly to the advancement of science.

In all these positions, and especially in the often difficult management of the affairs of the Coast Survey, his extraordinary influence and success may be attributed to his sterling honesty and simplicity as well as fixedness of purpose, to the even balance of a symmetrically developed and wellstored mind, to a quiet winning persuasiveness which, on a personal interview, rarely failed to convert even an opponent into a friend, and, in a word, to a consummate practical wisdom and shrewdness which may somewhat remind us of his distinguished ancestor. The conduct of affairs and details of administration which absorbed most of his best years, and for which he was so peculiarly fitted, took from him the opportunity of doing much that he had planned and might have done in original investigation. But even in this field he has left a name not unworthy of his lineage.

VICTOR COUSIN, the only Foreign Honorary Member deceased during the past year, died at Paris, about the middle of January last, in the 75th year of his age. His career has been long, brilliant, and prosperous. For nearly half a century his name has been indisputably the first among the philosophers of France, while his numerous writings have occupied and rewarded the attention, not only of the special students of psychological and metaphysical science, but of educated and thoughtful men generally. Though not well fitted either by his tastes or habits to gain political distinction, or to hold high office in the state, he was for a while a prominent member of that remarkable group of men, eminent in letters and science, who were the legislators and statesmen of France under Louis Philippe; he was created Councillor of State, member of the Royal Council of Public Instruction, Peer of France, and finally entered the Cabinet under the short-lived ministry of Thiers, in 1840, as Minister of Public Instruction. After the defeat of that ministry, he retired to his old pursuits and apartments in the Sorbonne, where he occupied, as a bachelor, the same rooms almost continuously for nearly thirty-five years, constantly employed on his numerous and successful publications, collecting a noble library, amassing an ample fortune, and leaving at his death both his books and money for the encouragement of philosophical studies.

That Cousin was able to accomplish so much, though he began life. without any extraneous advantages, indicates what has been the essentially democratic constitution of society in France during the first half of the present century, whatever may have been for the time its nominal form of government. Mobility of fortune and station, splendid