122 Me. W. Keddie on the Early History and Proceedings of the Society. 



Carlisle and Paisley. The Secretary was actually instructed to prepare 

 an outline of the project, to be communicated to the Philosophical 

 Society of Paisley. On the third night, the draft of a letter was accord- 

 ingly produced. But at the same meeting there was read from the 

 Eclectic Review an article in which Mr. Thomson's ideas of the appli- 

 cation of human force to the peripheries of v/heels were found embodied 

 in a treatise on the tread-mill, which had been already adopted in 

 various EngUsh prisons. This unexpected discovery caused the Society 

 rather suddenly to resile from its intention of acquainting the kindred 

 institution in Paisley with a cheap and ready way of raising water at the 

 Sneddon, which would have anticipated by nearly twenty years the 

 more elaborate and costly process of bringing it down from the braes of 

 Grieniffer. 



The allusion to prison discipline in this discussion, seems to have 

 induced Mr. R. Hart to describe, as he did at another meeting, a machine 

 for cutting corks, employed in the prison of Edinburgh. Another 

 night was occupied with the consideration of a method of kilUng whales 

 by i-ockets, and caterpillars by tobacco smoke. 



The Society this year (1822) passed a law rendering it incumbent 

 upon every member to contribute to the proceedings, and shilling fines 

 are frequently recorded afterwards for non-compliance. Instead of a 

 paper, Mr. Peter Aitken showed a number of natural curiosities, — 

 among the rest, a piece of rock crystal, with a great number of what 

 appeared to be red hairs running through it ; but a cross section seen 

 through a magnifier, disclosed, instead of hairs, a lozenge-shaped cavity, 

 filled with titanium, or with oxide of copper. Another specimen, with 

 the hairs running in various directions, belonged to a class associated 

 vulgarly with the name of some "Saint." Experiments were made 

 before the Society with the aii'-gun, disproving the supposition that a 

 gleam of light is produced at the moment the compressed air rushes 

 from the magazine. 



Mr. Boaz endeavoured to account for the disruptions and irregularities 

 of the earth's strata, by supposing that the planet had slowly altered the 

 position of her poles, the polar and equatorial regions having changed 

 places, causing the remains of tropical animals and vegetables to be found 

 near the pole, and those of polai* animals and plants near the equator. 

 The Society gives little evidence as yet of its having paid much atten- 

 tion to the progress of geological science, which by this time had laid 

 its foundations broad and deep in the principles enunciated by Hutton, 

 illustrated by Playfaii", confirmed by William Smith, and recognized as 

 the basis of its investigations by the London Geological Society. In 

 the minutes, the figure of a fragment of the spine of the Gyracanthus 



