An Ancient Indian City 133 



down. The bar, produced from this, was then hammered, 

 and proved to be excellent steel. " The importance of 

 this process for reducing the cost of steel in the manufacture 

 of tires, axles, piston-rods, boiler-plates, and other important 

 machinery can hardly be estimated." 



On Nov. I3th, the 88th meeting, Mr. Grove described the 

 recent occultation of Jupiter by the moon, as he saw it 

 through quite a small telescope (magnifying about 43 times). 

 As the planet approached the moon, it seemed to project 

 towards the disc of the latter, and this gave way to an 

 apparent flattening of both bodies, producing a definite line 

 between them, as Jupiter skimmed the edge of the moon 

 for 10 or 15. If the observation could be trusted, this 

 might be due to the moon's atmosphere or perhaps to its disc 

 being only partially illuminated. The light of Jupiter was 

 not so bright as that of the moon, and looked more blue. 



Colonel Sykes communicated the results of some excava- 

 tions made by Mr. Augustus Bellasis on the site of an Indian 

 city, about 80 miles to the north-east of Hyderabad, which 

 had been destroyed by an earthquake in the eighth century. 

 These showed the arts to have been well advanced. The 

 people could blow and cut glass, could make china like 

 Stafford ware, could put glazes on clay and trace designs 

 upon hard stones without incision. Masses of steel, cast in 

 crucibles, with charcoal attached, were met with, and a house 

 containing a lapidary's tools. The town was about three 

 miles in circumference, and its destruction, as skeletons were 

 found in the houses, must have been sudden. 



Professor Tyndall exhibited an apparatus invented by 

 M. Matteuchi for determining the power of crystalline bodies 

 to conduct electricity in different directions. This was 

 formed mainly of bars of bismuth, about 2 inches in length 

 and 2 lines in width, of which the cleavage planes were 

 sometimes parallel with, sometimes perpendicular to, their 

 length, and the differential galvanometer showed the rate at 

 which each set conducted electricity or heat. 



He also, with Prof. Huxley, gave an account of investiga- 

 tions which they had undertaken to ascertain the relation 



