468 Mr. Hopkins on the Elevation and 



not be laid aside by me, I hope the few curious and certainly 

 important facts which I have brought before you, will elicit 

 the attention of those whose leisure and well-known experi- 

 mental talents qualify them in the highest degree for the in- 

 teresting research into the action of those secret agents which 

 exert so powerful an influence over the laws of the material 

 creation. Although attention was called to the singular man- 

 ner in which vapours disposed themselves on plates of glass 

 and copper, two years since by Dr. Draper, Professor of Che- 

 mistry at New York, and about the same time to the calorific 

 powers of the solar spectrum, by Sir John Herschel*, and to 

 the influence of heat artificially applied, by myself (17), yet it 

 is certainly due to M. Moser of Konigsberg, to acknowledge 

 him to be the first who has forcibly called the attention of 

 the scientific w r orld to an inquiry which promises to be as 

 important in its results as the discovery of the electric pile 

 by Volta. 



As to the practical utility of this discovery, when we re- 

 flect on the astonishing progress made in the art of photo- 

 graphy since Mr. Fox Talbot published his first process, what 

 may we not expect from thermography, the first rude speci- 

 mens of which exhibit far greater perfection than the early 

 efforts of the sister art ? 



As a subject of pure scientific interest thermography pro- 

 mises to develope some of those secret influences which ope- 

 rate in the mysterious arrangements of the atomic constituents 

 of matter, to show us the road into the yet hidden recesses of 

 nature's works, and enable us to pierce the mists which at 

 present envelope some of the most striking phaenomena, which 

 the penetration and industry of a few " chosen minds" have 

 brought before our obscured visions. It has placed us at the 

 entrance of a great river flowing into a mighty sea, which 

 mirrors in its glowing waters some of the most brilliant stars 

 which beam through the atmosphere of truth. 



Falmouth, Nov. 7, 1842. Robert Hunt. 



LXXXII. On the Elevation and Denudation of the District 

 of the Lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland. By Wil- 

 liam Hopkins, Esq., F.G.S.-f 



THE general structure of this district has been long known to 

 geologists through the labours of Professor Sedgwick and other 

 geologists. The object of this paper is to afford theoretical expla- 



* Philosophical Transactions, Part I. for 1840, page 50. 

 t From the Proceedings of the Geological Society, vol. iii. part ii. p. 757; 

 having been read on June 1st, 1842. 



