1 48 Annals of the Philosophical Club 



1860. At the next meeting (ii7th), on Jan. 26th, Dr. 

 Hooker announced that Dr. Seeman, 1 who had accompanied 

 Captain Kellett on the Herald, had been allowed by Govern- 

 ment to go with Colonel Smythe. 



Lord Wrottesley announced that at a meeting of the 

 Trustees of the British Museum, the proposal to separate the 

 collections had been carried by one vote. 



Feb. 23rd, n8th meeting. Professor Tyndall thought 

 that Professor James Thomson was wrong in attributing 

 the regelation of ice to pressure, for, as he had calculated 

 the height of the column of ice above the Montanvert to be 

 over 4000 feet, that, if it acted vertically downwards, would 

 only lower the melting point there by 0.9 C., while its 

 observed temperature was 5C., and yet the ice was 

 yielding more rapidly in the centre than at the sides in the 

 proportion of 2 to i. Professor Faraday said that his 

 experiments on regelation proved that two pieces of ice 

 which were in contact under water at a single point, would 

 freeze together ; but he had not observed this property in 

 the case of any other solid wax, spermaceti, and some of the 

 metals having failed to show it. He thought it might be 

 restricted to bodies which expand in becoming solid. 



March 22nd, ngth meeting. Professor Brown-Sequard, 

 who was a guest, gave an account of his recent enquiries 

 into the existence of special nerve fibres. He had found 

 that some animals, particularly the frog, when the entire 

 posterior root of the spinal nerve has been divided, slowly 

 learned the power of directing the movement of the limb, 

 which could also be observed, though to a much smaller 

 extent, in the mammalia. He had also endeavoured to 

 ascertain if any decussation existed in the fibres of the 

 spinal cord, and had found on making a vertical incision in 

 it on one side of the medial line that the limbs on both sides 

 were more or less paralysed. 



1 Berthold Carl Seeman (1825-1871), born at Hanover, studied at Kevr. 

 Naturalist to the Herald on its voyage on west coast of America and in 

 Arctic Seas, 1847-51 ; accompanied Colonel Smythe 1860 ; made valuable 

 contributions to Botany. 





