100 HOPKINS ON A POSSIBLE PASSAGE TO THE NORTH POLE. [May 14, 1860. 



Eleventh Meeting^ May 14i/t, 1860. 



The EAKL DE GEEY AND KIPON, President, in the Chair. 



Presentations. — Rowland F. Jermyn ; Thomas Michell ; and B. 

 Coulson Robinson, Esqrs,, were presented upon their election. 



Elections. — Colonel James Molyneux C aul field ; the Rev. J. W. Clarke ; 

 Captain J. A. Grant; Lieut.- Colonel Edward Mackirdy ; Lieut. Everard 

 MUman ; Captain Moncrieffe ; Captain John Pooh ; Alfred Denison ; 

 Edioard M. Elderton ; Thomas Eraser ; Henry Kendall ; Augustus Henry 

 Smith; John Templeton ; and Robert Walker, m.d., Esqrs., were elected 

 Fellows. 



Accessions. — Among the donations to the Library and^Map-Eooms 

 since the former meeting were — the continuation of the Ordnance 

 Maps of Scotland; Sheets of Blackie and Dufour's Atlases; Plan of 

 Smyrna and Aden Eailway ; Hughes's Manual of Geography, &c. 



Exhibitions. — Photographs of Nazareth, Jerusalem, and Baalbec ; 

 Dr. Beke's Plan of Port Louis and its Environs; and Models of 

 Boats used by the Greenlanders, with various Articles of Dress, 

 were exhibited. 



The President said the two papers to be read were both connected with 

 Arctic subjects, and probably it would be most convenient to the Society that 

 they should be read in succession before any discussion took place. He would 

 now call upon Dr. Shaw to read the first, by Mr. Alderman Hopkins. 



The Papers read were — 



1. On a Possible Passage to the North Pole. By Thos. Hopkins, Esq., 

 Alderman, Manchester. 



Mr. Hopkins bases his arguments upon the remarkable bend to the 

 northward made by the isothermal lines of high latitudes between 

 the meridians of Iceland and Spitzbergen. He recapitulates the 

 experience of Parry, and expresses his belief that the seven degrees 

 of latitude, or 420 miles, by which that navigator was separated 

 from the Pole, might now be successfully traversed with the aid of 

 steam. 



Mr. Hopkins's Paper is largely occupied with deductions from 

 analogies of streams and aerial currents in other parts of the globe, 

 confirming the conclusions suggested by the peculiar course of the 

 isothermal lines mentioned above. 



ITie President next called upon the author to read the second paper upon 

 the proposed telegraphic communication with America by the Faroe Islands, 

 Iceland, and Greenland. 



