ber of reference is placed on the line, and the principal circumstances of the meteor are then registered in tables of the following form: Magnitude appearance. Remarks. 10h 6' 4". Epoch. No. relative to stars. the appearance. Aug. 29. 1 2 2".5 It is important to remark, whether the falling star leaves, or not, any trace of its course, as sometimes happens, in the form of reddish scintillations; the condition of the atmosphere, as determined by the usual instruments, should be noted; the time must be accurately ascertained; more than one observer should be engaged at each station, because the meteors sometimes succeed one another very quickly, and the duration of the phænomenon is too short to permit one person to note the position, time, and circumstances of each, with sufficient precision*. CONSTANTS OF NATURE AND ART. "Amongst those works of science which are too large and too laborious for individual efforts, and are therefore fit objects to be undertaken by united Academies, I wish to point out one which seems eminently necessary at the present time, and which would be of the greatest advantage to all classes of the scientific world. "I would propose that its title should be The Constants of Nature and of Art. It ought to contain all those facts which can be expressed by numbers in the various sciences and arts. (Babbage, Edinburgh Journal of Science, N.S., No. 12.) The following extracts from Mr. Babbage's general plan of contents will exemplify the objects and arrangement of the proposed work. These contents should consist of 1. All the constant quantities belonging to our system;-as distance of each planet,-period of revolution,-inclination of orbit, &c.-proportion of light received from the sun,-force of gravity on the surface of each, &c. 2. The atomic weight of bodies. 3. List of the metals, with columns for specific gravity,electricity,―tenacity,-specific heat,-conducting power for * Contemporaneous observations are especially desirable on this subject; persons desirous of undertaking this investigation are therefore requested to apply to a member of the Auroral Committee, or to the Assistant Secretary at York, for information of the evenings and hours appointed for this purpose. heat, conducting power for electricity,-melting-point,―refractive power,-proportion of rays reflected out of 1000,-at an incidence of 90°. 4. Specific gravities of all bodies. 5. List of Mammalia, with columns for height,—length,— weight, weight of skeleton,-weight of each bone,-its greatest length,—its smallest circumference, its specific gravity,―number of young at a birth,―number of pulsations per minute,number of inspirations per minute,-period of blindness after birth, of sucking,-of maturity,-temperature,-average duration of life,-proportion of males to females produced, &c. &c. SYNOPSIS OF SUMS APPROPRIATED TO Reduction of Observations of Stars. Discussion of Tides Constant of Lunar Nutation Meteorological Instruments . Observations of the Temperature of the Earth Comparative Level of Land and Sea Fossil Ichthyology Lens of Rock-salt 25 20 15 10 10 £1760 ADDRESS BY PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM R. HAMILTON. IT has fallen to my lot, Gentlemen, as one of your Secretaries for the year, to address you on the present occasion. The duty would, indeed, have been much better discharged had it been undertaken by my brother secretary; but so many other duties of our secretaryship had been performed almost entirely by him, that I could not refuse to attempt the execution of this particular office, though conscious of its difficulty and its importance. For if we may regard it as a thing established now by precedent and custom that an annual address should be delivered, it is not, therefore, yet, and I trust that it will never be, an office of mere cold routine, a filling up of a vacant hour, on the ground that the hour must be some way or other got rid of. You have not left your homes-you have not adjourned from your several and special businesses-you have not gathered here, to have your time thus frittered away in an idle and unmeaning ceremonial. There ought to be, and there is, a reason that some such thing should be done; that from year to year, at every successive reassembling, an officer of your body should lay before you such an address; and in remembering what this reason is, we shall be reminded also of the spirit in which the duty should be performed. The reason is the fitness and almost the necessity of providing, so far as an address can provide, for the permanence and progression of the body, by informing the new members, and reminding the old, of the objects and nature of the Association, or by giving utterance to at least a few of those reflections which at such a season present themselves respecting its progress and its prospects; and it is a valid reason, and deserves to be acted upon now, however little may have been left unsaid in the addresses of my predecessors in this office. For if even amongst the members who have attended former meetings, and have heard those eloquent addresses delivered by former secretaries, it is possible that 1835. d some may have been so dazzled by the splendour of the spectacle, and so rapt away by the enthusiasm of the time, as to have given but little thought to the purport and the use, the meaning and the function of the whole; much more may it be presumed that of the several hundred persons who have lately joined themselves as new members to this mighty body, there are some, and even many, who have reflected little as yet upon its characteristic and essential properties, and who have but little knowledge of what it has been, and what it is, and what it may be expected to become. First, then, the object of the Association is contained in its title; it is the advancement of science. Our object is not literature, though we have many literary associates, and though we hail and love as brethren those who are engaged in expressly literary pursuits, and who are either themselves the living ornaments of our land's language, or else make known to us the literary treasures of other languages, and lands, and times. Our object is not religion in any special sense, though respect for religious things, and religious men, has always marked these meetings, and though we are all bound together by that great tie of brotherhood which unites the whole human family as children of one Father who is in heaven. Still less is our object politics, though we are not mere citizens of the world, but are essentially a British Association of fellow-subjects and of fellowcountrymen, who give, however, glad and cordial welcome to those our visitors who come to us from foreign countries, and thankfully accept their aid to accomplish our common purpose. That common purpose, that object for which Englishmen, and Scotchmen, and Irishmen have banded themselves together in this colossal Association, to which the eyes of the whole world have not disdained to turn, and to see which, and to raise it higher still, illustrious men from foreign lands have come, is SCIENCE; the acceleration of scientific discoveries, and the diffusion of scientific influences. And if it be inquired how is this aim to be accomplished, and through what means, and by what instruments and process we as a body hope to forward science-the answer briefly is, that this great thing is to be done by us through the agency of the social spirit, and through the means, and instruments, and process which are contained in the operation of that spirit. We meet, we speak, we feel together now, that we may afterwards the better think and act and feel alone. The excitement with which this air is filled will not pass at once away; the influences that are now among us will not (we trust) be transient, but abiding; those influences will be with us long-let us hope that they will never leave us; they will cheer, they will animate us still, when this brilliant week is over; they will go with us to our separate abodes, will attend us on our separate journeys; and whether the mathematician's study, or the astronomer's observatory, or the chemist's laboratory, or some rich distant meadow unexplored as yet by botanist, or some untrodden mountain-top, or any of the other haunts and homes and oracular places of science, be our allotted place of labour till we meet together again, I am persuaded that those influences will operate upon us all, that we shall all remember this our present meeting, and look forward with joyful expectation to our next reassembling, and by the recollection, and by the hope, be stimulated and supported. It is true, that it is the individual man who thinks and who discovers; not any aggregate or mass of men. Each mathematician for himself, and not any one for any other, not even all for one, must tread that more than royal road which leads to the palace and sanctuary of mathematical truth. Each, for himself, in his own personal being, must awaken and call forth to mental view the original intuitions of time and space; must meditate himself on those eternal forms, and follow for himself that linked chain of thought which leads, from principles inherent in the child and the peasant, from the simplest notions and marks of temporal and local site, from the questions when and where, to results so varied, so remote, and seemingly so inaccessible, that the mathematical intellect of full-grown and fully cultivated man cannot reach and pass them without wonder, and something of awe. Astronomers, again, if they would be more than mere artizans, must be more or less mathematicians, and must separately study the mathematical grounds of their science; and although in this as in every other physical science, in every science which rests partly on the observation of nature, and not solely on the mind of man, a faith in testimony is required, that the human race may not be stationary, and that the accumulated treasures of one man or of one generation of men may not be lost to another; yet even here, too, the individual must act, and must stamp on his own mental possessions the impress of his own individuality. The humblest student of astronomy, or of any other physical science, if he is to profit at all by his study, must in some degree go over for himself, in his own mind, if not in part with the aid of his own observation and experiment, that process of induction which leads from familiar facts to obvious laws, then to the observation of facts more remote, and to the discovery of laws of higher orders. And if even this study be a personal act, much more must that discovery have been individual. Individual energy, individual patience, individual genius, have all been needed, to tear fold after fold away, which hung before the shrine of nature; to penetrate, gloom after gloom, into those Delphic depths, and force the reluctant Sibyl to utter her oracular responses. Or if we look from nature up to nature's |