PROCEEDINGS 



PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 



DECISMBEB 14, 1859. 



Alex. Harvey, Esq., Vice-President, in tlie Chair. 



Mr. George Thomson, designer, Partick, and Mr. John Goodall, 

 1 16 St. Vincent Street, were elected members. 



Mr, Walter Crum read an account of the Process of Ageing in 

 Calico Printing. (An abstract of this paper is deferred till it can be 

 accompanied by an illustrative woodcut.) 



Recent Investigatimis o/'M. Le Veeriek on the Motion of Mercury, 

 Bjr Professor Wm. Thomson. 



Professor W. Thomson stated that he had had his attention called, a 

 few days since, to recent investigations of M. Le Verrier on the motion 

 of Mercury, which, he believed, would interest the Society, not only as 

 constituting a new step of high importance in the theory of the plane- 

 tarj- motions, but as now affording that kind of evidence of the exist- 

 ence of matter circulating round the Sun within the earth's orbit, 

 which, more than five years ago, in pubUshing his theory of meteoric 

 vortices* to account for the Sun's heat and hght, he had called for, from 

 perturbations to be observed in the motions of the known planets. M. 

 Le Ven-ier, in a letter to M. Faye, published in the Compfe Rendu 

 for September 12, 1859, which contains his account of the investiga- 

 tions referred to, writes as follows : — 



" You have not perhaps forgotten how, in my studies regarding the 

 motions of our planetary system, I have encountered difficulties in the 



• " On the Mechaniciil Energies <if the Solar System," by Professor W. Thomson 

 — Trantaclioiu oflhi Royal Society, Kdinfmrr/h, and Philosophical Afirr/nzhie, 18.51. 



Vol. IV. -No. 3. 2 l 



