416 Dr. Leeson on the Circular Polarization of Light. 



strait is a powerful argument in favour of its being a peninsula. 

 Whence then comes the mighty current setting down Davis's 

 Straits, which drove that great " marine worthy," John Davis, 

 some 500 miles in ten days? Certainly not from Lancaster 

 Sound or the Fury and Hecla Strait. To the north then of 

 the former sound we must search for the water communication 

 connecting the two great oceans, and the most likely road is 

 by Jones's Sound. This opening alone arrested the attention 

 of Baffin, the discovery of the bay named after him, although 

 he passed others, including Lancaster Sound, in the belief that 

 they were bays. Since Baffin, Captain Sir John Ross is the 

 only traveller who has visited Jones's Sound, and as he was 

 wrong with respect to the character of Lancaster Sound, we 

 cannot place much confidence in the rest of his survey, while 

 we have the southerly movement of the waters of Baffin's Bay 

 unaccounted for. 



In conclusion I would observe, that although to fix the 

 North American boundary of the Polar Sea ages have been 

 required, owing to the apparently insurmountable difficulties 

 in the way, the prosecution of the survey has led to adventures 

 so fruitful in incident and so instructive in character that we 

 are able to recur again and again to the subject. And shall 

 we now stop, when one season, one short summer, is all that is 

 required to complete the labours of three centuries ? 



LXXII. Observations on the Circular Polarization of Light 

 by transmission through Fluids. By H. B. Leeson, M.D., 



TT is with considerable diffidence, and not without some re- 

 -^ gret, that I present the following observations on the cir- 

 cular polarization of light by transmission through fluids. 



It is with diffidence, because the conclusions, which are the 

 result of my own experiments, differ from those of others, de- 

 servedly considered able and acute observers. It is with re- 

 gret, because the tendency of the facts, which I expect to 

 establish before you, is to lessen in some degree the value of 

 an otherwise beautiful application of optical science to the 

 exigencies of chemical investigation. 



It is equally important to detect that which is erroneous as 

 it is to establish that which is true in science. Truth being 

 my only aim, I trust that, whilst endeavouring to remove the 



* Communicated by the Chemical Society; having been read December 

 4, 1843. As inserted in the Memoirs and Proceedings of the Society, vol. 

 ii., this paper is accompanied by a series of plates, the omission of which 

 has occasioned some slight verbal alterations, which the author has had the 

 kindness to revise, having also in&erted some additions and coi'rections. 



