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win university distinctions, and to grow old in the plenitude 

 of college dignities ; it is a great thing to wear civic honour, 

 and to enjoy, for any good reason, a social celebrity ; but 

 Hodgkinson aspired to more. He thirsted for enduring and 

 world-wide fame, and he has won it. How few are there of 

 the young men of this ardent and crowded Lancashire, even 

 of those who may achieve what are esteemed the greatest 

 successes of life, who will find, when their hair is grey, that 

 their names are printed year by year as seals of science in the 

 industrial manuals of all civilized nations ! Hodgkinson 

 diminished instead of increasing his little patrimony, in the 

 search of truth equally abstruse and beneficent; but this 

 proud memory he has left behind him — that, go where you 

 will in any clime of earth, if you meet a man fit to give 

 counsel about constructions, and to take the command of 

 labour, he will have in his breast pocket a little book, in 

 which many of the most precious oracles and most pregnant 

 formulae are stamped with the great name of Hodgkinson. 

 And this is fame — fame that will grow higher and speak 

 louder, as the world grows happier and wiser. For ages and 

 for ao-es the discoveries of Hodgkinson will economize 

 millions of treasure to the governments and the nations of the 

 globe, and prevent the destruction of innumerable lives." 



A Paper by Professor W. Thomson, LL.D., F.R.S., 

 Honorary Member, was read, entitled "Observations on 

 Atmospheric Electricity." 



I find that atmospheric electricity is generally negative 

 within doors, and almost always sensible to my divided 

 rin"- reflecting electrometer. I use a spirit lamp, on an 

 insulated stand a few feet from walls, floor, or ceiling of my 

 lecture room, and connect it by a fine wire with the insulated 

 half rinp- of the electrometer. A decided negative efl'ect is 

 o-enerally found, which shows a potential to be produced in 

 the conductors connected with the flame, negative relatively 



