400 NOTICES OF THE MEETINGS [March 6, 
GENERAL MONTHLY MEETING, 
Monday, March 6, 1854. 
Right Hon. Baron Parxe, Vice-President, in the Chair. 
George Richard Burnett, Esq. Edmund C. Johnson, M.D. 
William Chapman, Esq. Barry Charles Knight, Esq. 
George Clowes, Esq. John Parrott, Esq. 
Thomas Davis, Esq. Henry Pollock, Esq. 
Hananel De Leon, M.D. Charles Sartoris, Esq. 
Lt.-Col. Lothian Sheffield Dickson. George Ward, Esq. 
The Hon. Sir William Erle, Justice Nathaniel B. Ward, Esq. F.R.S. 
of the Court of Queen’s Bench. F.L.S. 
Richard Hoper, Esq. Thomas Young, Esq. 
were duly elected Members of the Royal Institution. 
John Hall Gladstone, Esq., Ph.D. Samuel Petrie, Esq. 
F.R.S. Michael Wills, Esq. 
were admitted Members of the Royal Institution. 
Mr. Farapay gave an account of some recent researches by 
Dr. Schénbein on the action of temperature upon the physical 
condition of bodies as manifested by their changes of colour. 
That heat deepens the colour of many bodies is well known; 
thus, sulphur becomes more and more coloured as it is heated. 
Schénbein has shewn that the change does not cease at com- 
mon temperatures, but that very cold sulphur is a colourless body. 
Even ink appears to be such a body; for diluted ink, being 
frozen, gives a dark coloured ice, and this by cooling to 40° below 
zero becomes colourless: it resumes its colour as it rises in tem- 
perature, and becomes dark before it ceases to be ice. Some bodies 
which are colourless at common temperatures acquire colour, either by 
heating or cooling ;— thus, if an infusion of roses or dahlias, ren- 
dered colourless by sulphurous acid, be raised in temperature, it will 
become coloured, and will lose the colour again as it cools. Or if 
it be introduced into a glass tube, and frozen by a mixture of snow 
and salt, it first freezes into a white ice, and then at a lower tem- 
perature becomes beautifully coloured red, after which, if it be 
raised in temperature it first loses the colour, then thaws, and at 
last melts into a colourless fluid. 
