244 Annals of the Philosophical Club 



himself by means of a simple apparatus for smelling different 

 odours, and practising for a few minutes night and morning, 

 to consider peppermint as one unit, camphor as two units, 

 carbolic acid as three, etc., and was able to translate the 

 earlier part of the addition table into these scents. He 

 thought that a child, if it began early enough, would not 

 find a process of this kind more difficult than learning 

 addition in the usual way. But, having got thus far, he did 

 not think it worth while to continue the experiments, and 

 found that the faculty temporarily acquired had already 

 been almost lost. 



1894. April igth, 422nd meeting (47th anniversary) . Mr. 

 Galton described a visit to an institution at Nice for rearing 

 prematurely born children. It was furnished with flat 

 glass cases like incubators, which could be kept at any 

 desired temperature, and in each lay a swaddled child, not 

 yet of the normal age for birth ; the facts being noted on a 

 placard. Apparently it was a private speculation, but it 

 received Government approval in 1891, and that of the 

 French Academy of Medicine in 1893. 



May 24th, 423rd meeting. Dr. Debus referred to the 

 fundamental law in modern chemistry supposed to have 

 been discovered by Avogadro in 1812. But, as the Italian 

 chemist was aware, John Dalton clearly stated the principle 

 in iSoS. 1 He, however, dropped it because he found such 

 remarkable discrepancies on comparing the atomic weights 

 with the densities of the gases. But a more exact deter- 

 mination of the former showed that they really correspond. 

 The discovery of this law seemed to him not less important 

 than that of gravitation by Newton. 



Sir A. Noble described an apparatus for determining the 

 rate with which high explosives part with their heat to the 

 chamber enclosing them. Cordite gases are remarkable 

 in this respect. A charge of it, giving in a closed vessel a 

 pressure of a little over 6 tons per square inch, has that 

 reduced in 0-07 of a second after the explosion to 6 tons, 

 in 0-17 second to 5 tons, in 075 second to 4 tons, in 1-75 



1 See H. E. Roscoe, John Dalton and the Rise of Modern Chemistry, 1895. 



