8 Anniversary Meeting. [Dec. 1, 



river which was gained, not by passage from its mouth, but by crossing 

 from another landing-place. Of the precise discoveries by Sir Samuel 

 Baker, and the last year's movements of Dr. Livingstone, little seems to 

 be known. Political circumstances have stimulated much research in 

 Central Asia. But the interest of all these sinks before that of the 

 Arctic explorers. In the instance of the American ship Polaris,' nine- 

 teen men, women, and children, fortunately furnished with provisions, 

 lived upon an icefloe (hopelessly separated from the ship in latitude 

 80 2') through the darkness of Arctic winter, drifting down Smith's 

 Sound and Baffin's Bay, from October 15, 1872, to April 1, 1873, 

 then betook themselves to a boat, and were rescued by the ' Tigress '' on 

 April 30, in sight of the coast of Labrador. Subsequently, eleven of 

 the crew who had been left in the ship, then beset in the ice, built boats 

 for themselves, and were picked up by the whaler * Eavenscraig,' were 

 transferred to the ' Arctic,' and were safely carried home. Some addi- 

 tions were made to our knowledge of the regions north of Smith's 

 Sound. And another Swedish expedition, in the Polheen and Gladan, 

 under the direction of Professor Nordenskiold, fast locked in a bay near 

 the northern extremity of Spitzbergen, was rescued by the ' Diana.' I 

 must avow that the fortunate termination of these two enterprises does 

 not in any degree blind me to the dangers of Arctic exploration in 

 general. 



In Geology, while the usual activity has been shown in collecting 

 details, and the usual accuracy in discussing them, I am not aware of 

 the introduction of any new principle, except in the theory proposed by 

 Professor Dana, explaining the elevation of mountain-ground and con- 

 tinents generally by the forced contraction which must have taken place 

 in the crust of the earth in consequence of the cooling of the interior. 



In the maritime part of the publications of the Meteorological Office, 

 an addition to the ten-degree square mentioned last year, applying to the 

 regions adjacent to that square, is now in the press. Sir James Boss's 

 observations south of the latitude 60 S., made in the expedition 

 1840-1843, have been published in an orderly form. As regards local 

 meteorology, a new and valuable station has been established at Stor- 

 noway ; the daily results of all stations are communicated, and proper 

 warnings given, to 129 places on the British coasts, and (at the request 

 of the French Government) to various ports from Dunldrk to Nantes. 

 In 1872, eighty per cent, of these warnings were successful. The daily 

 charts (first introduced by M. Le Verrier, but now issued on a highly 

 extended plan by the Meteorological Office) are circulated among a large 

 list of subscribers. I think that comparison of the records of the various 

 atmospheric elements upon these charts, continued from day to day, 

 would be more likely than any thing yet published to throw light upon 

 the difficult question of causes and effects in Meteorology. Dr. Daniel 

 Draper has traced the courses of rectilinear waves of cold and of storm 



