1865.] BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 329 



or fire-balls have left waving trains of light, whose changes of form 

 were in seeming accordance to varying pressure in the elevated 

 and attenuated atmosphere. (() 



Researches of every kind have so enriched meteorology since 

 our early friend, Professor J. Forbes printed his suggestive reports 

 on that subject ; and so great have been the benefits conferred on 

 it by the electric telegraph, that at this moment in M. Leverrier's 

 observatory at Paris, and the office so lately presided over by Ad- 

 miral FitzRoy in London, the messages are arriving from all parts 

 of Europe to declare the present weather, and furnish grounds for 

 reasonable expectation of the next probable change. Hardly now 

 within the seas of Europe can a cyclone begin its career of devasta- 

 tion, before the warning signal is raised in our seaports, to restrain 

 the too confident sailor. The gentle spirit which employed this 

 knowledge in the cause of humanity has passed away, leaving 

 an example of unselfish devotion, in a work which must not fail 

 through any lack of energy on the part of this Association, the 

 Royal Society, or the Government. We must extend these re- 

 searches and enlarge these benefits by the aid of the telegraph 

 bringing the ends of the world together. Soon may that thread of 

 communication unite the two great sections of the Anglo-Saxon 

 race, and bring and return through the broad Atlantic the happy 

 and mutual congratulations for peace restored and friendships re- 

 newed. 



The possible combinations of force, by which, in the view we 

 have been considering the characteristic force and special pheno- 

 mena of solid, liquid, and gaseous matter are determined, may be 

 innumerable. Practically, however, they appear to be limited, as 

 natural products, to less than one thousand distinguishable com- 

 pounds, and less than one hundred (u) elementary substances. Of 

 these elements the most prevalent are few on the earth ; as of gases, 

 oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen; of solids, silicon, calcium, magnesium, 

 sodium, iron ; and it is interesting to learn by analysis of the light 

 of stars and planets, that these substances, or some of them, are 

 found in most of the celestial objects yet examined, and that, ex- 

 cept in one or two instances, no other substances have been traced 



(t) This is the result of a careful discussion made by myself of obser- 

 vations on a meteor seen from Rouen to Yorkshire, and from Cornwall 

 to Kent, Jan. 7, 1856. 



(u) At the present moment the number of " elementary substances" 

 is sixty-one. 



