120 Mr. W. Ktddie on the Earlij Histonj and Proceedings oj the Societi/. 



apparatus now sold under patent. The first machine was iiuitated hy 

 a druggist in Edinburgh ; but it was blown to pieces by an explosion of 

 the gas. Mr. Cameron was the inventor of the fire-extinguishing 

 apparatus noticed in last paper. He was the first chemist and druggist 

 employed in the Glasgow Apothecaries' Hall. 



Mr. Robert Hart this year suggested the substitution of the air-gun 

 for the ordinai-y method of firing harpoons into whales, to prevent the 

 animal from being frightened away by the noise of the discharge. Mr. 

 Boag brought forward a plan for suspending the galleries of a church 

 from the roof, so as do away with pillars — an expedient which the Society 

 deemed unwarrantable in practice, but Mr. Xicholson, the mathemati- 

 cian, thought not impossible, if the lofts were hung from truss beams. 

 A plan for trapping common sewers, to prevent the escape of noxious 

 effluvia — an object of sanitary reform of the highest importance, but still 

 neglected by the public authorities — occupied the attention of the 

 Society at this period. The pigmentum nigrum of negroes was a subject 

 of investigation ; and Dr. Nimmo read a paper on the Properties of 

 Croton Oil. 



Mr. Lumsden speedily revived the subject of the street lamps, pro- 

 posing that they should be capped with earthenware, tinned inside, the 

 metal tops having been found corroded by the gas. 



Not unmindful of the Ducal project of a flying machine, Mr. Hart 

 exhibited a feather, made of silk, with steel stifieners, two of which 

 measured seventy feet from tip to tip, belonging to a flying apparatus, 

 made by Mr. M'Millan above thirty years previously, and attached to 

 one of Lunardi's balloons. 



Mr. Andrew Henderson allegorized the river Clyde by a female 

 figure, which unfortunately has not been preserved in the margin of 

 the minute-book, where so many pictorial illustrations appeal* ; although 

 immediately afterwards Mr. Freeland exhibited what is described as 

 " a molten image of the god Buddha," to which a niche is assigned, 

 and a reference is minuted as " per margin." 



Mr. R. Wallace, afterwai-ds editor of the Glasgow Mechanics' Magazine, 

 and subsequently of the Scottish Mechanics' Magazine, brought forward 

 an essay on the subject of Weights and Measures, called forth by 

 Mr. Clelland's statement then published. Mr. Wallace proposed to 

 find a fixed unit of measure, that would remain the same in all ages, and 

 which, even although destroyed, and no vestige of it, or of any former 

 standard or measure were in existence, could be found anew, at any time 

 and in any country. This he proposed to deduce from the unchange- 

 able and uniform convexity of the earth, the result of the general law 

 of gravitation. In another paper he recommended the dividing of the 



