Letter from. Professor Agassiz, accompanying a presentation of books

1. The President read the following extract from a letter addressed to Dr. Hector by Professor Agassiz, which accompanied the presentations from Harvard College.

“I have just received the diploma of membership of the New Zealand Institute, which you have forwarded to me. Please present my thanks to your learned Society for this distinction. I have been more delighted in receiving it than I can express. Certainly, when remembering the recent date of the colonization of New Zealand, there can be no more surprising evidence of the rapid progress of modern civilization than the publication of the Transactions of your Institute. Not that the printing of a book in any part of the world is now-a-days any marked event, but the volume before me is more instructive, and better put together, than the proceedings of most learned societies of a long standing. I have requested my friend, Mr. T. G. Cary, who takes care of the affairs of the Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge, to forward to you a series of the publications of our Institution; and I would now take the liberty of requesting you to send me also the first and second volumes of your Transactions and Proceedings. With our volumes you will also receive a set for each of your associated societies, which I beg you to forward. Allow me also to request you to send me whatever specimens of living and fossil animals you can spare, and to let me know what I could send you in return. I have a series of casts of Mastodon heads, of different ages, which might be interesting, and can offer any of the natural productions of North America you may wish, or at least procure them shortly if they are not at hand. It is my earnest desire to secure for our Museum as complete a representation of the living and extinct fauna of New Zealand as possible, before the progress of your settlement has made it impossible to bring together complete collections of the original fauna of your islands. I would particularly value specimens of all the species described in your Proceedings. I need scarcely add that specimens of the fishes described and figured by you would have a special interest for me. I shall direct my assistants in the different departments of the Museum to write to members of your Institute who work in the same field, and beg you may secure for them a friendly response.”

2. “Notes on the Practice of Out-door Photography,” by W. T. L. Travers, F.L.S. (See Transactions, p. 160.)

3. “On the Alkalinity or Acidity of certain Salts and Minerals, as indi-