1 by the usual tenant, and soon showed that he had interest, and though not the complete_combustion the worst of the combat: so severely was he of water predicted by Sir Humphry Davy, is at treated, that he was taken up by the gardener, and all events, as every one must admit, an imporheld in his hand, where he lay struggling and pant- tant step in the right direction.-Chambers' Jouring for breath. The victor, however, was not thus nal. to be deterred from further wreaking his vengeance upon the intruder. He boldly flew and alighted THE "GOVERNMENT CLASS" AT SYDNEY.apon the hand of the gardener; and forthwith pro-" It may be worth while here, suppressing names ceeded to peck the head of his victim, and buffet and dates, to give an instance of the feeling which him in such a manner that he would soon have put exists among what are called the 'free,' in oppohim hors de combat, had not the gardener carried sition to the government' classes, now emancihim out, and turned him off at some distance from pated, and possessing the same political rights and the building." privileges with the others. Several attempts have been made to conclude a treaty of alliance between BURNING OF WATER.-It was once remarked by failed before the invincible prejudices of hereditary them, but in vain. All endeavors hitherto have a celebrated chemist, when speaking of the probable exhaustion of our coal-fields, that he had little virtue; and there seems every possibility of the fear for that event, as long ere then the progress is not as its neighbors are-sons and daughters of permanent existence of a class which thanks God it of science would have enabled man to support the The prejudices entertained combustion of water. Extravagant as this opinion publicans and sinners. may appear to the unscientific, there is nothing against the black natives have been partially overmore likely. Water is a compound of oxygen and come, by a matrimonial alliance at Swan River. hydrogen-two gases without which it would be It was thought, therefore, that if a marriage beimpossible to eliminate a single phenomenon of them being of convict descent, were brought about, tween persons of a distinguished position, one of combustion. Thus the gas which we burn in our houses is carburetted hydrogen; that is, a coma great step would have been taken. A couple pound of carbon and hydrogen, which, on ignition, answering this description existed. The accomgives us light and heat only when in a medium plished and beautiful daughter of a man of wealth, containing oxygen-such as who had been one of the compulsory founders of the atmosphere. the state, was betrothed to a young man glorying Here, then, hydrogen and oxygen play most im- in all the pride of honest blood. The marriage portant parts; and could we resolve water into its elements, which it is quite possible to do, all that took place; the bride was given away by the is necessary to produce heat and light is a little governor of the colony. The public looked on in carbon. But we are not left to speculate on this seeming approval; and as soon as the reluctance matter; the thing has been so far done by M. of the young wife to appear in public was overJobard; and gas made from water, possessing band, a ball-room filled with all the rank and come, she entered, leaning on the arm of her husdouble the illuminating properties of ordinary coal fashion of Sydney. A titter ran round; there was gas, has been used both in France and in our own country. M. Jobard obtains his hydrogen gas by shaking of fans, and rustling of gowns, and exthe decomposition of steam in vertical retorts filled changing of glances, and tossing of heads, and with incandescent coke, and unites this gas, at the whisperings. Suddenly every kind and charitable moment of formation, with hyper-carburetted gas, and in a few minutes all the rank and fashion of lady rose from her seat, the dance was broken up, produced by the distillation of any hydro-carburet Sydney had disappeared; and even the hostess, -as oil, tar, naphthaline, and other products at present rejected by our ordinary gas-works. It is who had magnanimously issued the invitation, awed of no moment whence his hydro-carburets are pro advance to console the confounded and weeping by this expression of public opinion, dared scarcely duced; indeed, the substances which are rendered useless and injurious to the manufacture of the gas, cause of all this confusion ! by the present mode of operating, are precisely ing among the reprobates themselves. They have those which are the richest in illuminating proper- been taught to caricature the feelings of the free. tics. M. Jobard's process and its details have been Because these will not associate with the descendsubmitted, since its invention in 1833; to several commissions of inquiry both in Belgium and France, who are not descendants of rogues. A public dinants of rogues, those will not associate with any and the reports of these have been uniformly favorable both as to its cheapness and the higher illumi- ner was given by this class, to which the doctor nating power of the gas so produced. In a recent Great was the joviality among these sinners, and who took care of their bodily health was invited. number of the "Bulletin du Musée d'Industrie,' the inventor gives a full account of his process, which is about to become public property; and got on his legs, to answer for his profession; when mentions that it has been used in a manufactory descent were undoubted, and insisted that, because suddenly a man arose, whose claims to Newgate near St. Etienne, in Dijon and Strasburg, partially the son of Esculapius was a white sheep, he could in Lyons and Paris, and by private individuals in Dublin and London. He modestly concludes his not be heard. No sooner was this hint given, than paper by observing, that he will not be accused of divers significant glances were cast on the worthy exaggeration when he states " that there is some value in a process, the principle of which is to decompose water, a substance of no value, by means of coke, which is of very little value-as under this process one pound of oil, which costs a halfpenny, will supply a burner giving a light equal to ten candles during twenty hours." M. Jobard's is certainly a discovery of great "Another instance will exhibit the state of feel toasts of all kinds were drunk. Our medical friend doctor, who stood almost overwhelmed by the imputation. At length, mustering courage, he redenied the purity of his descent, and, for fear of pelled the charge of his honorable friend,' actually proved, by a long genealogical deduction, falling a victim to the exclusive dealing' system, his relationship with some notorious convicts."Foreign Quarterly Review. WE MUST INVADE IRELAND.-Ireland was Peel's SLIGHT CIRCUMSTANCES.-Sir Walter Scott, | phur, is fastened with an air-tight cover, which walking one day along the banks of the Yarrow, has a small tube, into which a small hose, conwhere Mungo Park was born, saw the traveller nected with a bellows, is inserted. The pan is throwing stones into the water, and anxiously held by an upper and a side handle. The night watching the bubbles that succeeded. Scott in- before it is used the field is surveyed, and all open quired the object of his occupation. "I was think-mouse-holes are trodden close. In the morning, ing," answered Park, "how often I had thus tried such as are reopened indicate those which are to sound the rivers in Africa, by calculating how tenanted, and one being selected, the lower part of long a time had elapsed before the bubbles rose to the pan is pressed against it, and the bellows being the surface." It was a slight circumstance, but set to work, the smoke issues from the orifice near the traveller's safety frequently depended upon it. the grating, and penetrates into the runs and In a watch, the mainspring forms a small portion galleries that connect the holes. A number of of the works, but it impels and governs the whole. assistants are required to tread the crevices close So it is in the machinery of human life-a slight through which the smoke is seen to escape; and circumstance is permitted by the Divine Ruler to if all due precautions be taken, great numbers of derange or to alter it a giant falls by a pebble; a these diminutive enemies may be slaughtered, and girl at the door of an inn changes the fortune of an at the same time buried, in their subterranean empire. If the nose of Cleopatra had been shorter, holds.—Banfield's Industry of the Rhine. said Pascal in his epigrammatic and brilliant manner, the condition of the world would have been different. The Mohammedans have a tradition, that when their prophet concealed himself in Mount Shur, his pursuers were deceived by a spider's web, which covered the mouth of the Luther might have been a lawyer, had his friend and companion escaped the thunder storm at Erfurt; Scotland had wanted her stern reformer, if the appeal of the preacher had not startled him in the chapel of St. Andrew's castle; and if Mr. Grenville had not carried, in 1746, his memorable resolution as to the expediency of charging certain stamp duties" on the plantations in America, the western world might still have bowed to the British sceptre. Cowley might never have been a poet, if he had not found the Faery Queen in his mother's parlor; Opie might have perished in mute obscurity, if he had not looked over the shoulder of his young companion, Mark Oates, the early Florentine painters, might have continued while he was drawing a butterfly; Giotto, one of a rude shepherd-boy, if a sheep drawn by him upon cave. a stone had not attracted the notice of Cimabue as he went that way.-Asiatic Journal. MICE IN GERMANY.-A plague peculiar to the dry districts along the Rhine is found in the mice, which, in a fine season, swarm in such myriads, that whole fields are devastated where no energetic means are adopted for destroying them. It is true that the winter frosts and spring floods cleanse the fields, to all appearance, thoroughly of this nuisance; yet, if the month of May be fine, they appear in August with undiminished force. In various villages, the remedies attempted are different. Sometimes a reward in money is offered per one hundred skins, and the youthful population is encouraged to exert its skill and passion for the chase on the modern hydra. All such efforts prove, however, ineffectual to keep down the numbers of the general foe, whose paths across a cornfield are nearly as broad as those trodden by single foot-passengers, while the hoard abstracted from his crop is estimated by the farmer from the number of straws nibbled off at a short distance from the ground, the ears from which have disappeared within the subterranean labyrinths, that often repay the labor of digging up. In the neighborhood of Jülich a mode of smoking out the mice has been introduced from Belgium. An iron pan, two feet high, has at bottom a grating supported by a pin. On the grating some charcoal is laid, and the pan, when filled with rags, leather, and sul difficulty: he said so. Ireland will be Russell's difficulty. She will be the difficulty of everybody who shall attempt to govern her peaceably: she is becoming even a difficulty to O'Connell; thanks small thanks-to Mr. Smith O'Brien. The fact is, as we have heard many respectable old gentlemen declare, that Ireland is not yet conquered; and conquered she must be. We there fore plainly and plumply, without mincing the matter, recommend an invasion of Ireland. Not from the vain wish to parade our skill in strategy, but from motives of the purest patriotism, do we propose the following arrangement of the invading forces: The van is to consist of grenadiers, to be called the 1st Life Potatoes, who are to shower the effective missile they take their name from on the quarters where it is most needed. Bread and Meat Brigade; troops that may be deThe right wing is to be formed of the Household pended upon for giving the enemy a bellyful. They are to be instructed to give no quarter, except the quartern loaf. The left shall be constituted by the Meavy (Barclay's) Dragoons, who will have formed a junction with Guinness' regiment at Dublin. These stout fellows will soon drench all their adversaries. In the centre shall be stationed the Light Eatables and Drinkables. The old Coercion Company is to be disbanded as useless, even as a forlorn hope. The whole army is to be flanked by a squadron of schoolmasters, who are to form a corps de reserve, to act only when the victory is decided, in order to complete and secure it. For, till the operations of the Provisional Battalion have been successful, the services of the scholastic force will be unavailing. The former, however, having broken the enemy's line, his utter route and discomfiture by the latter is inevitable.-Punch. NEW SIGN OF DEATH.-The following discovery may be of great service in cases of suspected death. The communication was lately made to the Royal Academy of Sciences, Paris, by M. Ripault, who, in directing the attention of members to the discovery, observed, that it consisted in perfect flaccidity of the iris when the globe of the eye is compressed in two opposite directions. If the individual be living, the pupil retains its circular form, notwithstanding the compression; if dead, the aperture becomes irregular, and the circular form is lost. From the Athenæum. Kingdom, you are for the first time assembled in the southeastern districts of England, at the solicita SIXTEENTH MEETING OF THE BRITISH ASSO- tion of the authorities and inhabitants of Southamp CIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SOUTHAMPTON, SEPT. 9. General Committee. dent, Sir John Herschel. ; ton. Easily accessible on all sides to the cultivators of science, this beautiful and flourishing seaport is situated in a district so richly adorned by nature, so full of objects for scientific contemplation, that, supported as we are by new friends in Association has hitherto maintained. For my own part, though deeply conscious of my inferiority to my eminent predecessor in the higher branches of science, I still venture to hope that the devotion I have manifested to this association from its origin to the present day, may be viewed by you as a guarantee for the zealous execution of my duties. Permit me, then, gentlemen, to offer you my warmest acknowledgments for having placed me in this honorable position; and to assure you, that I value the approbation which it bestowed on me an honor the more esteemed from implies as the highest honor which could have been its being conferred in a county endeared to me by family connexions, and in which I rejoice to have my first essay as a geologist. THE Committee assembled in the town hall, at England, and by old friends from the farthest reone o'clock, and the chair was taken by the presi-gions of Europe, we shall indeed be wanting to ourselves, if our proceedings on this occasion should The secretary read the report of the council not sustain the high character which the British which congratulated the association on the success of the application made to her majesty's government for carrying into effect the recommendations respecting magnetic and meteorological observations adopted at the Cambridge meeting, [Ath. No. 922.] Sir R. Peel had recognized the importance of having these observations regularly made at the British observatories, and in the colonies; and the East India Company had given directions for their continuance at Fort William, Bombay, and Madras. They are to be continued, also, at Toronto and St. Helena; and arrangements are in progress for establishing them at Paramatta and the Cape of Good Hope. The magnetic survey of the East India seas is in progress; and so is that of Hudson's Bay-which will connect itself with Sir John Franklin's survey of the northern parts of AmeriThe origin, progress, and objects of this our ca. Through the Earl of Aberdeen, application explained on former occasions by your successive "parliament of science" have been so thoroughly was made to foreign governments for the communication of such observations as had been made presidents, particularly in reference to that porunder their directions, and favorable answers had tion of our body which cultivates the mathematical, been received. Her majesty's government had chemical, and mechanical sciences, that after briefpromised a favorable consideration to the applica-ly alluding to some of the chief results of bygone tion made by the association and the Royal Society, conjointly, that a premium should be offered for improvements in the construction of magnetic and meteorological instruments; and the Royal Society had given the sum of £50, from the Wollaston fund, for the construction of a self-registering instrument of this kind, at the association's observatory at Kew. On the motion of Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, the president elect, seconded by the Marquis of Northampton, it was resolved that his royal highness Prince Albert having signified his intention to visit the association and attend the opening meeting, the association do elect him their sole honorary member. The motion was carried by ac clamation. EVENING MEETING-THURSDAY. The business of the sections-seven in number -commenced in the morning; but we shall postpone our report of their proceedings till our next publication, for the purpose of coming at once to the opening general meeting and the president's address. The expected visit of H. R. H. Prince Albert attracted a large assembly; and on his arrival, a little after eight o'clock, Sir John Herschel opened the proceedings by announcing that he was about to vacate the chair, and make room for the president elect, Sir R. I. Murchison. In doing so, he congratulated the association on the bright prospect before them of a most successful meeting at Southampton. Sir R. I. Murchison then delivered the annual address, as follows. The President's Address. GENTLEMEN,-After fifteen years of migration to various important cities and towns in the United made years, with a view of impressing upon our new members the general advances we have made, I shall in this discourse dwell more particularly on the recent progress and present state of natural history, the department of knowledge with which my own pursuits have been most connected, whilst shall also incidentally advert to some of the proceedings which are likely to occupy our attention during this meeting. I No sooner, gentlemen, had this association fully established its character as a legitimate representative of the science of the United Kingdom, and by the reports which it had published, the researches which it had instituted, and the other substantial services which it had rendered to science, had secured public respect, than it proceeded towards the fulfilment of the last of the great objects which a Brewster and a Harcourt contemplated at its foundation, by inviting the attention of the government to important national points of scientific interest. At the fourth meeting, held in Edinburgh, the association memorialized the government to increase the forces of the Ordnance Geographical Survey of Britain, and to extend speedily to Scotland the benefits which had been already applied by that admirable establishment to the south of England, Wales, and Ireland. From that time to the present it has not scrupled to call the notice of the ministers of the day to every great scientific measure which seemed, after due consideration, likely to promote the interests or raise the character of the British nation. Guided in the choice of these applications by a committee selected from among its members, it has sedulously avoided the presentation of any request which did not rest on a rational basis; and our rulers, far from resisting such appeals, have uniformly and cordially acquiesced in them. Thus it was when, after paying large sums from our own funds for the reduction of large there constructed, that I earnestly hope it may be masses of astronomical observations, we represent-sustained as heretofore by annual grants from our ed to the government the necessity of enabling the funds, particularly as it is accomplishing consideraastronomer-royal to perform the same work on the ble results at very small cost. observations of his predecessors which had accu- Our volume for the last year contains several mulated in the archives of Greenwich, our appeal communications on physical subjects from eminent was answered by arrangements for completing so foreign cultivators of science, whom we have the important a public object at the public expense. pleasure of reckoning amongst our corresponding Thus it was, when contemplating the vast acces- members, and whose communications, according to sion to pure science as well as to useful maritime the usage of the association, have been printed enknowledge to be gained by the exploration of the tire amongst the reports. In a discussion of the South Polar regions, that we gave the first impulse peculiarities by which the great comet of 1843 was to that project of the great Antarctic expedition, distinguished, Dr. von Boguslawski, of Breslau, has which, supported by the influence of the Royal So- taken the occasion to announce the probability, ciety and its noble president, obtained the full as- resting on calculations which will be published in sent of the government, and led to results which, Schumacher's "Astronomische Nachrichten," of through the merits of Sir James Ross and his com- the identity of this comet with several of a similar panions, have shed a bright lustre on our country, remarkable character recorded in history, comby copious additions to geography and natural his- mencing with the one described by Aristotle, which tory, and by affording numerous data for the devel-appeared in the year 371 before our era: should opment of the laws that regulate the magnetism of his calculations be considered to establish this fact, the earth. Dr. von Boguslawski proposes that the comet The mention of terrestrial magnetism brings with should hereafter be distinguished by the name of it a crowd of recollections creditable to the British" Aristotle's comet." This communication conAssociation, from the perspicuous manner in which every portion of fresh knowledge on this important subject has been stored up in our volumes, with a view to generalization, by Colonel Sabine and others; whilst a wide field for its diffusion and combination has been secured by the congress held at our last meeting, at which some of the most distinguished foreign and British magneticians were assembled under the presidency of Sir John Herschel. tains also some highly ingenious and important considerations relating to the physical causes of the phenomena of the tails of comets. Dr. Paul Erman, of Berlin, father of the adventurous geographical explorer and magnetician who was one of the active members of the magnetic congress at Cambridge, has communicated through his son some interesting experiments on the electrodynamic effects of the friction of conducting substances, and has pointed out the differences between these and normal thermo-electric effects. Baron von Senftenberg (who is an admirable example of how much may be done by a liberal zeal for science combined with an independent fortune) has published an account of the success with which self-registering meteorological instruments have been established at his observatory at Seutenburg, as well as at the national observatory at Prague. made in various parts of the globe, at the periods of the equinoxes and solstices, commencing with the year 1834. It is indeed most satisfactory for us to know, that not only did all the recommendations of the association on this subject which were presented to our government meet with a most favorable reception, but that, in consequence of the representations made by her majesty's secretary of state for foreign affairs to the public authorities of other countries which had previously taken part in the system of cooperative observation, the governments of Russia, Austria, Prussia, and Belgium have notified Of our own members, Mr. Birt has contributed a their intention of continuing their respective mag-second report on atmospheric waves, in continuanetical and meteorological observations for another tion of the investigation which originated in the disterm of three years. cussion by Sir John Herschel, of the meteorologiIn passing by other instances in which public lib-cal observations which, at his suggestion, were erality has been directed to channels of knowledge which required opening out, I must not omit to notice the grant obtained from our gracious sovereign, of the royal observatory at Kew, which, previously In a communication to the meeting of the assodismantled of its astronomical instruments, has been ciation at York, Colonel Sabine traced with great converted by us into a station for observations pure- clearness (from the hourly observations at Toronto) "ly physical, and especially for those details of at- the effect of the single diurnal and single annual mospheric phenomena which are so minute and progressions of temperature, in producing on the numerous, and require such unremitting attention, mixed vapors and gaseous elements of the atmosthat they imperiously call for separate establish- phere, the well-known progressions of daily and ments. In realizing this principle, we can now yearly barometrical pressure. To the conclusions refer British and foreign philosophers to the obser- which he then presented, and which apply, perhaps vatory of the British Association at Kew, where I generally, to situations not greatly elevated in the have the authority of most adequate judges for say-interior of large tracts of land, the same author has ing they will find that a great amount of electrical and meteorological observation has been made, and a systematic inquiry into the intricate subject of atmospheric electricity carried out, by Mr. Ronalds, under the suggestions of Prof. Wheatstone, to which no higher praise can be given than that it has, in fact, furnished the model of the processes conducted at the royal observatory of Greenwich. This establishment is besides so useful through the facilities which it offers for researches into the working of self-registering instruments which are added, in the last volume, a valuable explanation of the more complicated phenomena which happened at points where land and sea breezes, flowing with regularity, modify periodically and locally the constitution and pressure of the atmosphere. Taking for his data the two-hourly observations executed at the observatory of Bombay by Dr. Buist, Colonel Sabine has succeeded in demonstrating for this locality a double-daily progression of gaseous pressure, in accordance with the flow and re-flow of the air from surfaces of land and water which are unequally effected by heat. And thus the diurnal variation | sal-ammoniac may daily be collected at the single Among the many useful national objects which have been promoted by the physical researches of the British Association, there is one which calls for marked notice at this time, in the proposal of Mr. Robert Stephenson to carry an iron tube, or suspended tunnel, over the Menai Straits, to sustain the great railway to Holyhead. This bold proposal could never have been realized if that eminent engineer had not been acquainted with the great progress recently made in the knowledge of the strength of materials, and especially of iron; such knowledge being in great measure due to investigations in which the association has taken and is still taking a conspicuous share, by the devotion of its friends and the employment of its influenceinvestigations which have been prosecuted with great zeal and success by its valued members, Mr. Hodgkinson and Mr. Fairbairn. Whilst on this topic I may observe, that in the recent improvements in railways the aid of scientific investigation was called for by the civil engineer, to assist him in determining with accuracy the power to be provided for attaining the high velocities of fifty and sixty miles an hour; and it was found and admitted by the most eminent engineers, that the very best data for this purpose, and indeed the only experiments of any practical value, were those which had been provided for some years ago by a committee of the British Association, and published in our transactions. The Institution of Civil Engineers thus gave testimony to the practical value of our researches by adopting their results. However imperfect my knowledge of such subjects may be, I must now notice that the last volume of our Reports contains two contributions to experimental philosophy, in which subjects of the deepest theoretical and practical interest have been elucidated, at the request of the association, by the labors of its foreign coadjutors. That some substance of a peculiar kind everywhere exists, or is formed in the atmosphere by electrical agency, both natural and artificial, had long been suspected, especially from the persistency of the odor developed by such agency, and its transference by contact to other matter. Prof. Schönbein, to whom I shall hereafter avert as the author of a new practical discovery, is, however, the first philosopher who undertook to investigate the nature of that substance; and though the investigation is not yet complete, he has been enabled to report no inconsiderable progress in this difficult and refined subject of research. Weighed, however, only in the scales of absolute and immediate utility, the remarkable results of these skilful and elaborate experiments give them a character of national importance, and justly entitle the authors and the body which has aided them to the public thanks. After this glance at the subjects of purely physical science treated of in the last volume of our Transactions, let us now consider the domains of Natural History:-and, as one of the cultivators of a science which has derived its main support and most of its new and enlarged views from naturalists, let me express the obligation which geologists are under to this association, for having aided so effectively in bringing forth the zoological researches of Owen, Agassiz, and Edward Forbes. These three distinguished men have themselves announced, that in default of its countenance and assistance, they would not have undertaken, and never could have completed, some of their most important inquiries. Agassiz, for example, had not otherwise the means of comparing the ichthyolites of the British isles with those of the continent of Europe. Without this impulse, Owen would not have applied his profound knowledge of comparative anatomy to British fossil saurians; and Edward Forbes might never have been the explorer of the depths of the Ægean, nor have revealed many hitherto unknown laws of submarine life, if his wishes and suggestions had not met with the warm support of this body, and been supported by its strongest recommendations to the naval authorities. These allusions to naturalists, whose works have afforded the firmest supports to geology, might lead me to dilate at length on the recent progress of this science; but as the subject has been copiously treated at successive anniversaries of the Geological Society of London, and has had its recent advances so clearly enunciated by the actual president of that body who now presides over our geological section, I shall restrain my "esprit de corps" whilst I briefly advert to some of the prominent advances which geologists have made. When our associate ConyA request from the association to Prof. Bunsen, beare reported to us, at our second meeting, on the of Marburg, and our countryman, Dr. Lyon Play- actual state and ulterior prospects of what he well fair, coupled with a contribution of small amount termed the "archæology of the globe," he dwelt towards the expenses involved in the undertaking, with justice on the numerous researches in different has produced a report on the conditions and pro- countries which had clearly established the history ducts of iron furnaces, which is of the greatest of a descent as it were into the bowels of the earth value in a commercial view to one of the most im--which led us, in a word, downwards through portant of our manufactures, and possesses at the those newer deposits that connect high antiquity same time a very high interest to chemical science with our own period, into those strata which supin some of the views which it develops. On the port our great British coalfields. Beyond this, howone hand, it exhibits an entirely new theory of the ever, the perspective was dark and doubtfulreduction, by cyanogen gas as the chief agent, of Res altâ terrâ et caligine mersas. iron from the ore: on the other it shows, that in addition to a vast saving of fuel, about two cwt. of Now, however, we have dispersed this gloom; and |