ADBRESS BY PROFESSOR DAUBENY. XXIX 



the force of their impact, and this he has shown in his present memoir 

 not to be the case, the hardest and most elastic substances producing 

 no more eflfect upon a beam than any soft inelastic body of equal weight. 

 Various other conclusions of much practical as weU as theoretical im- 

 portance are stated in the above paper, and the results are severally 

 borne out by an elaborate and careful series of experiments. 



Our Foreign Associate, Mons. Quetelet, has presented to us a sketch 

 of the progress and actual state of the Mathematical and Physical Sci- 

 ences in Belgium, of interest, not only from the information it conveys, 

 but likewise as the contribution of a distinguished foreigner, who had 

 evinced already his respect for this Association, by attending one of its 

 meetings. The appearance of this Report, together with that published 

 in the preceding volume by Professor Rogers, of Philadelphia, on the 

 Geology of North America, I regard as a new proof of our prosperity. 

 It shows that the Association has begun to exert an influence over the 

 progress of Science, extending even beyond the sphere which, by its 

 name of British, it claims for its own ; and that it has enlisted in its be- 

 half the sympathies not only of our Transatlantic brethren, who speak 

 the same language and boast of a common extraction, but likewise of 

 those Continental nations, from whom we had so long been severed. 



On the subject of Chemistry, our transactions of this year contain 

 only a short report by Dr. Turner, explanatory of the sentiments of the 

 members of the Committee which had been appointed the preceding 

 year, to consider whether or not it would be possible to recommend some 

 uniform system of Notation which, coming forward under the sanction 

 of the most distinguished British chemists, might obtain universal recog- 

 nition. In the discussion which took place when this subject was 

 brought before us at Dublin, three systems of Notation were proposed, 

 differing one from the other no less in principle than in the end proposed 

 by their adoption. 



The first was that suggested by the venerable founder of the Atomic 

 Theory, Dr. Dalton, who aimed at expressing by his mode of notation, 

 not merely the number of atoms of each ingredient which unite to form 

 a given compound, but likewise the very mode of their union, the sup- 

 posed collocation of the different particles respectively one to the other. 

 He proposed, therefore, a sort of pictorial representation of each com- 

 pound which he specified, just as in the infancy of writing each sub- 

 stance was indicated, not by an arbitrary character, but by a sign 

 bearing some remote resemblance to the object itself. This, therefore, 

 may be denominated the Hieroglyphical mode of Chemical Notation ; 

 it was of great use in the infancy of the Atomic Theory, in familiarizing 



