338 
high office you have intrusted to me. I must endeavour, so far as 
in me lies, to justify your choice; and at all events to show you, 
by my zeal for the progress and welfare of the Academy, that my 
best energies, such as they are, shall be devoted to your service. 
Our business here is not amusement, or relaxation, but the spread 
of learning, the communication of knowledge to each other, and to 
the public,—the interchange of that mutual encouragement, and 
sympathy, and support, which will enable us, each in his own de- 
partment, to promote the great object of our Association,— the 
investigation and the discovery of Truth. Let a generous emula- 
tion to be foremost in this noble and glorious pursuit banish from 
our meetings all party spirit, all private differences. Our discus- 
sions will, I trust, be at all times conducted with manly freedom,— 
but even when we differ in opinion from each other, let us remem- 
ber that the expression and calm discussion of such differences is 
one of the most important instruments for the discovery of Truth ; 
and let our debates be an example of the philosophic spirit, which 
is most in accordance with the objects for which we are incorpo- 
rated, which is, most agreeable also to the feelings of the polished 
gentleman and to the instincts of the enlightened Christian. Then 
may we hope that the meetings of the Academy may continue to 
be to others what they have already been to us, the means of 
- forming deep and lasting friendships, the source of warm personal 
attachments, and of the highest intellectual enjoyment; and we 
may then hope for the more complete fulfilment of that noble 
aspiration, with which the accomplished Burrowes concluded his 
Preface to the first volume of our Transactions :— 
“The GOD of Truth will look propitious on our labours, and 
a ray from Heaven shall light us to success.” 
Mr. Gilbert Sanders read a notice of some properties of 
solid figures revolving on axes in supports fixed at the surface 
level of fluids. 
A sector of any solid figure which may be described by 
the revolution of any plane round an axis, if freely suspended 
by the axis on supports fixed at the surface level of any fluid, 
