14 REPORT — 1853. 



strength of sea water, and rendered uniform in constitution, by the agitation of the 

 8torms which then prevail. Flowing back again from the coasts of India, where 

 they are now in excess, to those of Africa, where they suffer from perpetual drainage, 

 the same round of operations goes on continually ; and the sea, with all its estuaries 

 and its inlets, retains the same limit, and nearly the same constitution, for un- 

 numbered ages. Capt. Haines, in his survey of the Arabian seas, describes the 

 perplexing currents betwixt the Straits of Babelmandeb and Cape Aden ; strong 

 bands of inshore currents sixty miles in breadth or so running in one direction, 

 while similar bands of an outward current run in the opposite direction ; and 

 currents similarly turbulent and irregular are found at the mouth of the Persian 

 Gulf. Dr. Buist has no doubt that both may be explained on the principle so 

 well laid down by Dr. Scoresby in reference to the Gulf-stream, where the tropical 

 current running northvvard meets and intermingles with the polar one running 

 southward. Speculating on these matters some j'ears since, Mr. Maury, of the United 

 States Observatory, had, from a totally different series of considerations, come 

 to exactly the same conclusions as these Dr. Buist had arrived at. So eager was 

 this distinguished observer to follow up the subject, that he afterwards oflFered 

 a sum equivalent to 300/. annually for the collection of information at Bombay 

 to enable him to construct for the Indian seas wind and current charts, similar 

 to those he had constructed for the Northern Atlantic, and these, it is under- 

 stood, are now in a state of great advancement. The money was respectfully 

 declined; some Bombay merchants having undertaken to provide for his use, at 

 their own charge, the information desired, conceiving that it was enough that 

 British traders should receive from America a survey of the currents of the English 

 seas in the East without at the same time accepting funds from a foreign state which 

 the British Government had failed to provide. Such were looked on as the advantages 

 likel)"- to accrue from the labours of Mr. Maury, that an estimate was published, 

 showing that, assuming the statement of the Royal Society to be correct, maps and 

 sailing directions for the Eastern seas, such as had been provided for the Northern 

 Atlantic, would save to the ports of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay from a quarter 

 to half a million annually in freights. 



On Drawings of the Moon, By James Nasmyth, F.R.A.S. 



These magnificent drawings of the moon, three in number, were exhibited and de- 

 scribed, in the absence of the author, by Prof. Phillips. The first was a drawing of the 

 moon's visible surface 6 feet in diameter. The two others were drawings, on a larger 

 scale, of two particular portions of the lunar mountains. They were executed in a 

 very peculiar style, white on grey ground, with shadows, wiuch conveyed a very clear 

 conception of the relief and depressions of the several parts of the surface. Mr. 

 Phillips described several of the ring mountains, mountain ranges, and other pecu- 

 liarities of the surface as depicted upon them. In particular he drew attention to 

 long narrow bright lines, like the meridional lines on a globe, which in some places 

 were seen to stretch across a large portion of the disc. He stated the ingenious expla- 

 nations of these features given at a former meeting by Mr. Nasmyth, and the experi- 

 ment which he had devised to illustrate the cause and nature of them. Mr. Nasmyth 

 held them to be fissures filled up by some very dense or highly reflective mineral sub- 

 stance which had been forced up from underneath the solid crust of the moon by the 

 same agency which had produced the cracks or fissures as they were seen to traverse 

 hill and valley, mountain and crater, in nearly unbroken lines, regardless of surface 

 inequalities, which facts appeared to Mr. Nasmyth to justify and confirm his conclu- 

 sions as to the nature and cause of these bright radiating lines. Professor Phillips 

 stated that these lines were only seen when the light of the sun fell in particular angles 

 upon them. If he were to offer a conjecture as to their origin, he would say that they 

 originated in some peculiarity of the reflecting surface of the moon, by which the 

 peculiarities of what lay below the surface were manifested. 



Oil Photographs of the Moon. By John Phillips, M.A., F.R.S., F.G.S. 



The fascinating processes of Photography can perhaps be hardly ever more use- 

 fully applied than in fixing on metal, paper, or glass pictures of objects which are 



