Joseph Baxendell, F.R.S. 49 



exposed to the vicissitudes of weather. 4th — That the 

 sanitary measures which have been carried out during the 

 last fifteen or twenty years by Boards of Health, Health 

 Committees, and Officers of Health have produced no 

 perceptible improvement in the state of the public health, 

 nor checked the growing increase in the rate of mortality, 

 notwithstanding the enormous outlay they have involved ; 

 and that, therefore, a thorough reform of our existing sani- 

 tary system is urgently required. — " On Infant Mortality in 

 Manchester" : acomparison of the infant mortality in this city 

 with that of several large towns as given in the Registrar 

 General's returns. In this paper he states, " it is therefore 

 clear from these returns that the stigma of carelessness with 

 regard to their children, cast upon the mothers of the working 

 class of Manchester, is most undeserved, and that, in fact, 

 infants and young children are better cared for and attended 

 to in Manchester than in any of the leading manufacturing 

 towns in England." " On the Mortality Returns for Scotland 

 for the last ten years." 



Session iSjo-ji. — " Observations of the Aurora of Oct. 

 25th, 1870"; "Observation of the Eclipse of the Sun, 

 December, 1870 " ; " Remarks on Mr. Spence's Experiments 

 on the Effects of Cold on the Strength of Cast Iron." About 

 this time an interesting discussion took place in the Society 

 on the effect of cold on cast iron, in which Dr. Joule, Mr. 

 Brockbank, Dr. Hopkinson, and others took part. From 

 some experiments, Mr. Spence concluded that a specimen 

 of cast iron, having at 70° Fahr. a given power of resistance 

 to transverse strain, will, on its temperature being reduced 

 to zero, have that power increased by 3 per cent. Treating 

 the numerical results of the experiments in accordance with 

 the theory of errors, Mr. Baxendell comes to the conclusion 

 that the experiments, though made with great care, offer no 

 certain evidence that any sensible change takes place in the 

 strength of cast iron when its temperature is reduced from 

 D 



