About a fortnight since I mentioned to Professor Forbes that the resistances of the simple metals to the passage of electricity seemed to be very nearly in proportion to their absolute temperature, this relation being especially manifest for those values of the resistances determined by M. Arndtsen.

Professor Forbes informed me that this coincidence had already been observed by Professor Clausius, and that an abstract of his paper was given in the Philosophical Magazine for November last. On referring to Professor Clausius's original paper, it would seem that the coincidence had suggested itself to him as a remarkable similarity occurring between the rate of increase (due to temperature) of the electrical resistance of those metals, and that of the volume of a gas under constant pressure.

In this paper the author described numerous experiments, serving to show the modification which occurred in the capillary attraction between mercury on the one hand, and various saline and acid fluids forming parts of active voltaic circles on the other. He also described and showed to the Society the undulatory motions which he had observed in mercury, when forming the cathode of a constant voltaic current in solutions of chloride of sodium, containing small quantities of sulphuric acid.

Before entering on the details of the natural history of the herring, the author points out the great value of the herring-fishery to the maritime nations of Europe; and quotes various scientific authorities to show, that the herring is superior in economical importance to every other fish. Thus Cuvier, in his work on fishes, edited by Professor Valenciennes, says,—“Les grands politiques, les plus habiles economistes ont vu dans la pêche du hareng la plus importante des expeditions maritimes.”

In this paper the writer starts by assuming Dove's Temperatures for the mean of every 10th parallel of latitude, from 75° N. to 40° S., to be correct. His object is to inquire how far the influence of the proportion of land and water in modifying the annual temperature of a given parallel is susceptible of being reduced to a formula.

The amount of land and water in different latitudes is first tabulated.

It is then shown, from an examination of the ordinary isothermal curves, and also from Dove's charts of the “Thermic Anomaly,” that the influence of land is to exalt the temperature of lower latitudes, and to depress that of higher latitudes.

The researches contained in the author's memoir, of which the following is a brief abstract, extended over a period of several years, and are based on careful microscopic examination of several thousand specimens of lichens from every part of the known world. The author examined the lichens of the Hookerian Herbarium at Kew, which contains an unrivalled series of specimens collected by the various surveying and exploring expeditions of the British Government, as well as by all the more distinguished modern British travellers. This collection is further valuable, from containing authentic specimens collected and named by Borrer, Turner, Hooker, Brodie, Carmichael, Babington, and other distinguished British lichenologists, as well as by Acharius, Schærer, Swartz, and other continental authors.

Professor Allman called attention to some bones discovered by Dr Andrew Balfour in a clay field near Portobello, and forwarded by him for presentation to the Museum of Natural History. They prove to be bones of a seal, and consist of some vertebræ, a portion of a scapula, a radius, a femur, and a fibula. They thus afford an additional instance to the few already recorded, of the occurrence of phocine remains in the British Islands. The deposit in which they occurred appears to belong to the period of the boulder clay. They were found about 20 feet above the present level of highwater, and about 15 feet below the surface of the soil.

The author commences his communication by showing the need that has arisen for a scientific exposition of the laws of thought in relation to the laws of life and organization. In all the practical business of society, as well as of the physician, the phenomena of life and mind are inseparably associated; and consequently without such scientific exposition anything like a scientific application of mental philosophy to medicine and the sciences of human nature, included under sociology, is impossible. But physiology is itself a derivative science, inasmuch as vital processes are primarily dependent upon certain molecular forces of matter, known as light, heat, chemical affinity, &c.

We have recently been engaged in the laboratory of the Industrial Museum in executing some analyses of glass, which, as of general interest, I lay before the Society. The analyses in question have been made by Mr Bloxam, the official laboratory-assistant, and it is desirable first to mention with what object they were undertaken. I have limited the investigation in the first place to common bottle glass and window glass in use in Scotland, and so far as could be ascertained, also manufactured in Scotland. As yet we have only overtaken six varieties, and the full import of their analyses will not appear till additional examples have been examined.

The author, in a paper communicated to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1849, described a method of observation by which he had succeeded in measuring the brightness of visual impressions of short duration. This consisted in causing a disc, with a sector of a known angle cut in it, to revolve with a known uniform velocity between the eye and a luminous object. At each revolution of the disc a flash is seen. The time during which the light has acted on the eye is easily computed from the angle of the sector and velocity of the disc; and the brightness of the flash is ascertained by photometric arrangements. By this method the brightness of impressions formed on the eye by light acting for short intervals of time varying from ·1 to ·001 of a second was ascertained with results which have been described in the paper already referred to.

The author stated, that the present communication might be regarded as supplementary to the one describing the results of his marine dynamometer, which would be found in the 14th volume of the “Transactions.” On the Bound Skerry of Whalsey, which is only exposed to the waves of the North Sea or German Ocean, he had found, on first landing in 1852, masses of rock, weighing 9½ tons and under, heaped together by the action of the waves at the level of no less than 62 feet above the sea; and others, ranging from 6 to 13½ tons, were found to have been quarried out of their positions in situ, at levels of from 70 to 74 feet above the sea.

Whilst the average fall of rain during the preceding six years in January has been at Ambleside 4·22 inches; in this month, in the current year, the rain measured has amounted to 14·82 inches.

The quantity of rain that has fallen in other localities of the district during the same month is stated in a table, in which also is included the rain-fall in some other parts of the United Kingdom. In the former, it has ranged from 14·375 to 6·514 inches, diminishing with distance from the central mountains; in the latter, the range has been from 6·48 inches to 0·36 inch, diminishing, it would seem, with distance from the western coasts.

The first part of this paper describes the following groups of experiments:—

I. On the effect which roughening the surface of a body produces upon its radiation.

II. On the nature of that heat which is radiated by rock-salt at at 212° F.

III. On the radiation of glass and mica at high temperatures.

The second or theoretical portion of the paper has reference to the law which connects the radiation of a particle with its temperature, and to Dulong and Petit's experiments on this subject. The instruments used, and method of using them, were almost the same as described in the first series of these researches.

Dr Richardson, in a recent and elaborate work on the blood, an extension of a Prize Essay on the cause of the coagulation of this fluid, has endeavoured to prove that this phenomenon is of a chemical kind, depending on the escape of the volatile alkali.

The author of the paper of the above title describes three sets of experiments which he has instituted for the purpose of testing Dr Richardson's hypothesis. In all his trials on blood, he has used that of the common fowl, its properties being best adapted to the objects in view.

The object of this communication was to direct attention to the recent recovery of two documents establishing the priority of Cavendish as the discoverer of the composition of water. Their importance was indicated by the late Mr Robert Brown, the botanist, and his literary executor, Mr J. J. Bennett of the British Museum, has brought them before the Royal Society of London. They are both, contrary to general expectation, published statements contained in well-known works.

The author remarked, that the impressions of the feet of birds and molluscs on wet sand, were liable to be effaced by the return of the tide; and that their preservation was owing to dry sand blown into the depressions from the shore, and again covered by a layer of moist sand or mud by the return of the tide. In regard to tracks left by gasteropodous molluscs, he stated that great caution was necessary to distinguish them from those left by Nereids; and instanced the case of a foot-track of a common whelk resembling the marks made by the Crossopodia on the Silurian slates. When the track of the whelk is filled up by the dry sand blown into the depression in the line of progress, no difficulty is felt in recognising it as the track of a gasteropod; but should the wind blow at right angles to the track of the mollusc, a series of setse-like markings will be observed to leeward, caused by the dry sand adhering to the moist.

It has been customary for those who have opened the business of the Session in the Royal Society, from the seat which I now occupy, to give some notice of those members who may have been taken from us by death during the preceding year. The rolls of the Society still exhibit many names illustrious both in science and in literature, but seldom has a year occurred in which we have been deprived of so great a number of eminent members.

Recent researches have shown that there is an intimate relation between the specific gravities and atomic weights or equivalents of solid and liquid bodies. This relation is not so simple as that which prevails in regard to the volumes and combining numbers of gaseous bodies, and yet it is sufficiently marked to indicate many important chemical analogies. The formula for eliciting these relations is—

in which E is the equivalent, d the specific gravities, and V the atomic volume.

On the Tadpole of the Frog.—The author first notices the jelly—the peculiar enveloping matter of the ova—describing its properties and uses,—the latter, according to him, for the double purpose of defending the eggs before being hatched, and affording the tadpoles food after their hatching. He considers the substance of the jelly a variety of albumen.

Secondly, He notices the ova, which he describes as resembling, in their properties and composition, those of fishes.

Thirdly, He enters into some details respecting the growth of the tadpole and its metamorphosis, specially dwelling on the fact, that whilst in the change to the advanced form there is a diminution of volume, there is an increase of solid matter—the young frog having a bony skeleton, which the tadpole is destitute of.

Professor Simpson made a communication on acupressure, as a new mode of arresting surgical hæmorrhage. After describing the various methods of stanching hæmorrhage in surgical wounds and operations which the Greek, Roman, Arabic, and Mediæval surgeons employed, he gave a short history of the introduction of the ligature of arteries, and spoke of it as—with the occasional exception of torsion for the smallest arteries—the hæmostatic means almost universally employed in chirurgical practice at the present day. But he thought that surgery must advance forward a step farther than the ligature of arteries, particularly if surgeons expected—as seemed to be their unanimous desire—to close their operative wounds by the immediate union or primary adhesion of their sides or walls.

On the Growth of Birds.—The author's observations on this subject are chiefly confined to the martin, the common fowl, the turkey, and goose. They all tend to show a rapid growth, varying in degree according to the habits of the species. The young martin was found on leaving its nest heavier than the parent bird; and this the growth, as to time, of about twenty days, reckoning from the hatching of the egg. A turkey poult, the day it quitted the egg, weighed one ounce and three quarters; in five months it had increased to ten pounds. A gosling, in thirty-four days, had increased in weight from six ounces to six pounds.