most extravagant statements
and predictions. It is denounced, in the strongest terms, as a worthless
compound of malice and credulity.

* * * * *

The OBITUARY for the month embraces the name of M. GAY-LUSSAC, one of
the great scientific men of Paris. The _Presse_ says that few men have
led a life so useful, and marked by so many labors. There is no branch
of the physical and chemical sciences which is not indebted to him for
some important discovery. Alone, or in conjunction with other eminent
men, particularly with M. Thenard and M. de Humboldt, he carried his
spirit of investigation into them all. At a very early age he was
elected a member of the Academy of Sciences. In 1810, says M. Pouillet,
speaking in the name of that academy, when the university opened, at
length, its public courses of high teaching, it sought to associate in
that object the most eminent scientific men of France, and M.
Gay-Lussac, though very young, recommended himself to it by the double
title of chemist and natural philosopher. "M. Gay-Lussac was already
famous by his discovery of the fundamental laws of the expansion of gas
and vapors; by a balloon ascent the most important and almost the only
one of which the history of science has any record to keep; and for many
works on chemistry which tended to lay the bases on which that science
was soon afterward to be established." M. Gay-Lussac was a peer of
France.

The Brussels papers mention the premature death of M. P. SOUYET, the
eminent chemist, at the early age of thirty-two. M. Souyet was professor
of chemistry at the _Musee de l'Industrie_, and at the Royal Veterinary
School at Brussels. His funeral, on the 6th inst., was attended by the
most eminent scientific men in Brussels; and M. Quetelet delivered an
address, in which he briefly enumerated the important discoveries and
chemical investigations that have rendered the name of M. Souyet so well
known. M. Souyet had written several valuable chemical works.

The EMPEROR OF CHINA, TAU-KWANG (the Lustre of Reason), "departed upon
the great journey, and mounted upward on the dragon, to be a guest on
high"--in other words died, on the 25th of February, in the sixty-ninth
year of his age, and thirtieth of his reign. His death is said to have
been caused by the fatigue he underwent at the funeral ceremonies of the
late Empress-Dowager, his mother-in-law. The nomination of a successor
in China rests always with