ADDRESS. XXXVll 
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eome to our Sections for the solution of any questions relating to their pur- 
_ suits to which can be given a purely scientific answer. If they ask for the- 
_ explanation of the dependence of vegetation upon subsoil or soil, our geo- 
 logists and botanists are ready to reply to them. Is it a query on the com- 
parison of the relative value of instruments destined to ceconomize labour, 
the mechanicians now present are capable of answering it. And if, above all, 
_ they wish us to solve their doubts respecting the qualities of soils and the re- 
sults of their mixtures, or the effects of various manures upon them, our che- 
mists are at hand. One department of our Institution is, in fact, styled the 
Section of Chemistry and Mineralogy, with their applications to Agriculture 
and the’ Arts, and is officered‘in part by the very men, Johnston, Daubeny and 
Playfair, to whom the agriculturists have, in nearly all cases, appealed. The 
first-mentioned of these was one of our earliest friends and founders; the 
second had the merit of standing by the British Association at its first meet- 
_ ing, and there inviting us to repair to that great University where he is so 
much respected, and where he is now steadily determining, by elaborate 
experiments, the dependence of many species of plants on soil, air and 
stimulus; whilst the third has already been alluded to as one of our best 
actual contributors. 
If in reviewing our previous labours I have endeavoured to gain your at- 
tention by some incidental allusions to our present proceedings, I have yet to 
assure you, that the memoirs communicated to our Secretaries are sufficiently 
numerous to occupy our Sections during the ensuing week with all the vigour 
which has marked our opening day. Among the topics to which our as- 
sembling’ at Southampton gives peculiar interest, I may still say that if 
geologists should find’ much to interest them in the Isle of Wight, the same 
island contains a field for'a very curious joint discussion’ between them and 
the mathematicians, with which I became acquainted in a previous visit to 
this place. It is a discovery by Colonel Colby, the Director of the Trigo- 
nometrical Survey, of the existence of a notable attraction of the plumb-line 
to the south, at the trigonometrical station called Dunnose, on Shanklin 
Down. The details of this singular phenomenon, which has been verified 
by observations with the best’ zenith sectors, will be laid before the Sections. 
In the meantime, we may well wonder, that on the summit of a chalk hill of 
low altitude which is bounded on the south by the sea (near whose level the 
deviation is scarcely perceptible), there should exist an attraction of more 
than half the intensity of that’ which was registered’ by Maskelyne, when he 
_ suspended a plummet at the side of the lofty Scottish mountain of Schehal- 
lion! If those of our geologists, who like Mr. Hopkins of Cambridge have 
_ entered bolily into the field of geological’ dynamics; cannot explain this’ re- 
_ tnarkable fact, by connecting it with the ridge of dislocated strata that runs 
_ through the island as a back-bone from west to east, may we venture to 
refer’ it to dense plutonic masses, of rock ranging beneath the surface, parallel 
_ to'the line of displacement of the deposits? 
_ Another local subject—one indeed of positive practical interest—that 
y stands before'us for discussion, is, whether, by persevering in deepening the 
_ large shaft’ which they have sunk so deep into the chalk near this tqwn, the’ 
inhabitants’ of Southampton may expect to be eventually repaid, like those’ 
of Paris, by a full’ supply of subterranean water, which’ shall rise to the’ 
surface of the'low plateau on which the work has been undertaken? On’ 
No occasion, I must observe, could this'town be furnished with a greater’ 
number of willing counsellors, whose opinions will, it is hoped,. be ade- 
quately valued by the local authorities. The question whether this work 
Ought to be proceeded with’ or not, will however, I wees be most 
a: 
+1846. 
