Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 383 



The Commission appointed to decree the mathematical prizes, 

 announced, that M. Pontecoulant's memoir On the perturbation of 

 comets, was worthy of being crowned. — M. Fred. Cuvier gave an 

 account of M. Guerin's Atlas of the Animal Kingdom.— M. Arago 

 communicated Magnetic ob.servations made at Kassan by M. Kuppfer j 

 and from which it appears that the horizontal needle was deranged 

 by the aurora borealis on the same days as at Paris. He afterwards 

 read a letter which he had received from M. De Br^aut^, on an eartii- 

 quake felt in the neighbourhood of Dieppe during the night of the 

 1st and 2nd of last April. The same member, in the name of a com- 

 mission, made a report on the \'oyage of the Chevrette.— Tlie sitting 

 was terminated by a memoir of M. Vauquelin, On Carrots ; and by 

 reading an addition to M. Cauchy's memoir On the linear dilatation 

 and condensation of solid bodies. 



LXI. Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 



IMPriOVEIMENTS IN THE MANAGEMENT OF MINES. 



T^HE following Address was delivered by John Taylor, Esq. of 

 A, Coed-du, near Mold, at a public dinner at Holywell, given to 

 him by the various gentlemen interested in Mines and Manufactures 

 in the counties of Flint, Denbigh, Chester, and Lancaster.— 

 P. D. Cooke, Esq. in the Chair. 



Mr. Chairman,— The improvements in the management of mines, 

 which you have complimented me by associating with my name, 

 have, I consider, arisen out of circumstances which demanded 

 them ; have, like all other progressions of the human mind, been 

 advanced by various persons, and have been fostered and encou- 

 raged by favourable coincidences. My own experience of mining 

 during a period of more than 30 years, has enabled me to witness 

 their progress, and to contemplate their effect: if it has also em- 

 powered me to be the channel of communication, by which their 

 advantages have been extended to this most important mining dis- 

 trict, I shall feel as much honoured by this distinction, as^I am 

 gratefully affected by the distinguished mark of your opinion upon 

 the subject, and the notice you have taken of the humble effort 

 of an mdividual. I feel, that if this district, so early celebrated for 

 its mineral riches, has been more tardy than some other parts of 

 the kingdom in developing its resources, it is only because they 

 have not been called for, because the necessity which has stimu- 

 lated the miners of Cornwall did not exist here. And now when 

 the time has come that treasures arc to be explored, we shall see 

 whether the miners of North Wales will not know how to profit by 

 the experience of others ; and having discernment to see what is 

 good, will adopt the most salutary measures, and carry them for- 

 ward with the modifications and improvements which will best 

 adapt them to the different circuni.stances of their mines and habits 

 of their people. That the mines of Cornwall should take a lead 

 in the means of overcoming the difficulties that nature presents, to 

 the pursuit of the metals, was almobt a matter of couric, inasmuch 



as 



