them having any knowledge of the subject. He was afterward fitted for college under his pastor, the Rev. Dr. James Walker, subsequently Professor and President of Harvard University, to whom he recited daily, entered the sophomore class at Harvard in 1830, and was graduated in 1833. He entered the Divinity School in Cambridge in the fall of 1834, and remained there two years, but was practically employed in teaching almost constantly after graduation: in the first year, in a small private school in Charlestown; in 1834-'35, as assistant to Prof. Peirce in the instruction of the college classes in mathematics; in 1835-36, as proctor and instructor in mathematics; in 1836-'37, as tutor in mathematics and lecturer in natural philosophy; and from 1838 to 1888, as Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. Retiring from this active professorship after fifty years of service, he became, as he still is, Hollis Professor Emeritus. He acted as Regent in 1853-'54 during Prof. Felton's absence in Europe; succeeded to that office in 1857, and held it till 1870; but passed a year's leave of absence—given to him in consideration of his long and uninterrupted services to the college—in 1868-'G9, in Europe. When the Jefferson Physical Laboratory was opened in 1884, he was appointed its director, and during the four years of his administration made annual reports of its activities.
While his college duties demanded the largest share of his time and his best thoughts, he found and improved opportunities to make a good record of other work—all for the increase and dissemination of knowledge. Among these extra-collegiate exercises were nine courses, of twelve lectures each, and each lecture delivered to two different audiences in the earlier years, on astronomy and physics, at the Lowell Institute; shorter courses of lectures at the Smithsonian Institution, the Peabody Institute of Baltimore, and the Charitable Mechanics' Institution of Boston; and single lectures in different towns and cities in New England. He edited, in 1842, at the request of the author, a new edition of Farrar's "Electricity and Magnetism." One of his essays on the aurora borealis, in the "Memoirs" of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, fills a thick quarto volume. Other memoirs, on terrestrial magnetism, the aurora, the determination of transatlantic longitudes, etc., published in the same series, attest the fertility of his researches.
As Permanent Secretary of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, from 1854 to 1873, Prof. Lovering edited fifteen volumes of its "Proceedings." Retiring from this office on being elected President of the Association for 1873, he put upon record that, when he entered upon its duties at the eighth meeting of the Association, the body had an annual income of only a few hundred dollars, and was dependent upon the gener-
