OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 79 



D. Graham, U. S. A., Chicago, May, 1858, presenting their 

 various publications ; — and from the Royal University of 

 Christiania, Norway, November 7, 1857, presenting a medal 

 in honor of Christopher Hansteen. 



Mr. Sherwin made a communication upon a curious prop- 

 erty of numbers. He also spoke, in the way of inquiry, of the 

 supposed low temperature of water at a great depth in the 

 ocean. 



Mr. F. H. Storer doubted the fact of such a low degree of 

 temperature under these circumstances ; he thought the indi- 

 cations of the self-registering thermometer were not reliable. 



Mr. Folsom exhibited a stone slab bearing a Latin inscrip- 

 tion of the date of 1703. Part of the stone was wanting ; but 

 Mr. Folsom made a conjectural restoration of the missing por- 

 tion of the inscription. It related to Castle William, in Bos- 

 ton Harbor. It was found by Mr. Folsom in the attic of the 

 old Athenaeum building, in Pearl Street. 



Professor Lovering referred to the laying down of the 

 Oceanic Telegraph cable between England and America, 

 and gave an account of Captain Blakely's strictures upon the 

 method pursued, which overlooked the great resistance of the 

 water to the stretching of the cable straight, and the neces- 

 sity, which followed from this resistance, of the vertical de- 

 scent of each point of the cable, and its being slack on the 

 bottom, and of the length therefore required exceeding that 

 originally calculated. 



Dr. W. F. Channing followed in some remarks, speaking 

 particularly of the retardation of the current by the sheathing 

 of iron wire. 



Professor Plorsford described a method of illustrating the 

 interference of the waves of sound, used by Mr. Gould, a 

 student in the Cambridge Scientific School. A tuning-fork 

 was held over a vessel, the length of which was changed by 

 pouring in water until it was in tune with the fork. While 

 the fork is vibrating, it is turned round on its long axis. 



