1864. | The President’s Address. 737 
The following are a few of its salient features, but they in no way 
convey an adequate idea of the Address, which has been printed in full 
in most of the leading journals :— 
Referring to the past history of Bath, the author touches briefly on 
the ruins of the ancient city, the Aque Solis of the Romans, and 
speaks of its antiquities and of its relatively lower level as compared 
with modern Bath. 
Its mineral waters next command his attention, and he refers to the 
fact that there has been no material diminution in their temperature 
(as is also the case in the waters of Aix, Baden, &c.) since the time of 
the Romans; and, speculating upon the date of their origin, he 
expresses the belief that “they are only of high antiquity when con- 
trasted with the brief space of human annals;” for, “though their 
foundations were tens of thousands of years old, they were laid at an 
era when the Mediterranean was already inhabited by the same species 
of marine shells as those with which it is now peopled.” 
The probable cause of hot springs is, according to Sir Charles, a 
mighty one; their effect equally potent. From their proportionately 
greater number and higher temperature as we approach the localities 
in which there are active or extinct volcanoes, he infers that there is a 
link between the hot spring and the volcano. And after speaking of 
the large amount of mineral matter conveyed to the surface by such 
springs (enough, as Professor Ramsay has estimated in the case of 
those of Bath, to form a solid square column 9 feet in diameter and 
140 feet high), and of the immense quantity of nitrogen gas evolved 
(according to Dr. Daubeny 250 cubic feet per day), he considers the 
probable effect of such springs to be that of increasing the bulk of the 
rocks through which they pass, thus giving rise to a mechanical force 
of expansion capable of uplifting the incumbent crust of the earth ; in 
fact, he constitutes them one of the causes of change in the relative 
level of land and water. 
The Bath springs, Sir Charles Lyell believes, “like most other 
thermal waters, mark the site of some great convulsion and fracture 
which took place in the crust of the earth at some former period.” 
“The uppermost part of the rent through which the hot water rises is 
situated in horizontal strata of Lias and Trias 800 feet thick,” the 
lower passing “through the inclined and broken strata of the Coal 
measures.” 
After describing how the water may have passed downward from 
the surface, dissolving and retaining mineral matter in its course 
“until it encounters some mass of heated matter,” by which it is con- 
verted into steam and driven upwards through a fissure, the author 
touches upon the analysis of the various mineral waters at home 
and abroad, attributing some of their virtues to the presence in them 
of what we may call the spectroscopic metals ; namely, those traced by 
means of the spectroscope—of Lithium, Strontium, Rubidium, &e. ; and 
he speaks of a hot spring discovered near Redruth, in Cornwall, in 1839, 
at a great depth in a copper-mine, in which Professor W. A. Miller has 
found besides the usual mineral constituents, not only Cesium, but 
Lithium, to the extraordinary amount of 1-26th part of its whole solid 
