The Sixth General Meeting of the Association for the Improvement of Geometrical Teaching appointed a Committee for Geometrical Conies, and one for “Higher Plane Geometry, including such subjects as Transversals, Projection, Anharmonic Eatio, etc.”

Dr. Hirst in his Presidential Address has said of the latter subjects, “Until these notions become more familiar ones, I, for my part, believe that Geometrical Conies will always remain in its present unsatisfactory condition. . . . It will be, of course, a question for this Association to decide whether, pending the introduction of the more thorough treatment based on the notions to which I have alluded, some improvement may not be introduced into the subject of Geometrical Conies, as at present understood, with a view of enabling examiners at all events to examine with greater facility and purpose. At present the definitions are so multiform and the sequence of propositions so varied in different text-books, that it is found to be an exceedingly difficult task to examine satisfactorily in the subject at all.”

John Dee, commonly though improperly called Dr. Dee, whose life extended over more than eighty years (1527-1608), was a mathematician and astronomer for more than fifty years, and a magician and raiser of spirits in his old age. It is by these latter practices that he is generally best known, and full accounts of them are given in the Dictionary of National Biography and in the life of Sir Edward Kelley in the recently published book, Twelve Bad Men, edited by Mr. Seccombe.