PEEFACE. 



This little volume needs, perhaps, a few words of 

 ])reface, for it is the first one which the Clifton 

 College Scientific Society has ever issued. The aim 

 of a modest publication like ours differs greatly from 

 that of the more elaborate and costly productions 

 which the ' Learned Societies ' send forth to the world, 

 and we have perhaps been rash in assigning to such a 

 trifle the high-sounding term ' Transactions.' But the 

 word will do as well as any other for a title, though in 

 using it we must not mislead our readers into the idea 

 that our book is anything better than the record of a 

 mere School Society. The raison dJetre of the present 

 volume is simply this: very many members of the 

 College, and a large number of old Cliftonians and 

 friends, have thought it would be desirable to issue in 

 a collective form some interesting papers, read from 

 time to time at the Scientific Society's Meetings, and to 

 accompany these essays by a brief record of its pro- 



