ON INSTRUMENTS FROM ITALY. 143 



of ammonia ; and even the vapour which rises from ice, and which 

 they with happy intuition compared to clouds ; and finally all that you 

 see illustrated here in the photograph of a part of Galileo's Tribune 

 namely, the reflection of cold by means of a burning-glass, which thus 

 outstrips the modern theories of radiating caloric and its tendency 

 towards equilibrium. To clear up the phenomenon of the salto dell' 

 immersione, they were led to make other and no less important experi- 

 ments on the expansion of bodies by heat, and their contraction by 

 cold, using glass and many metals ; and they were the first to make 

 the well-known experiment with a bronze armlet in which when heated 

 moves sensibly a cylinder made expressly, but when it has cooled 

 down this last does not fit in to it. 



And this Academy, the first, and one so rich in most important dis- 

 coveries in every branch of science, after a duration of only ten years, 

 ceased to exist. Its founder was made a cardinal ; reasons of State 

 required it ; and truly for a cardinal to be the head of an Academy 

 which was named Del Cimento, would have been too much for those 

 times. And indeed the disestablishment of the Academy was but a 

 corollary to Galileo's trial. 



Instituted in the year 1657, it was the first scientific academy ; the 

 one of Vienna, begun by Doctor Bausch was not fully established 

 till the year 1670. The Royal Society of London had its true origin 

 in 1663, and in the first volumes of its reports it relates the experi- 

 ments of the Accademia del Cimento. The Academy of Sciences of 

 Paris dates from 1666. 



The CHAIRMAN : Ladies and Gentlemen, I have no doubt a great 

 number of the audience were able to follow the Cavaliere de Eccher 

 better than I have been able to do in the interesting history of the 

 instruments he has described, but we cannot too much . thank the 

 Italian Government for permitting them to leave Italy. As I might miss 

 much in giving you a summary, from my imperfect knowledge of Italian, 

 I have asked my distinguished friend the Rev. S. J. Perry, whom you 

 have all heard of as being at the head of the expedition to Kerguelen 

 Island to observe the transit of Venus, to run briefly over the princi- 

 pal topics of the paper. 



The Rev. S. J. PERRY having given a resume of the paper above 

 printed 



