232 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. V. 



votes with the second, and above the fourth, an older member. 

 In truth, as I was almost the youngest member, and received 

 the chair without request or canvassing in the least, altogether 

 unexpectedly, I value the honour, and I expect to derive from 

 my place many benefits in my prosecution of science. In 

 virtue of my office, which is no sinecure, I have got the pleasant 

 task of drawing up a report of the recent progress of chemistry 

 and geology, besides inaugural addresses and such like. As the 

 Physical is a Eoyal Chartered Society, including an elder and a 

 superior class of students, and as it reports its Transactions in 

 the public newspapers, there is more good to be gained from it 

 than from any other of the junior societies. 1 



" There is some prospect afar off, but not uncertain, of lecturing 

 being got, so that I work hopefully onwards. The Snowdrop 

 piece, my farewell rhyme, has greatly delighted the ladies who 

 have read it ; and two young friends, Messrs. Giraud and 

 Shaw, amiable, kind-hearted, accomplished fellows, have been 

 fighting for the autograph scrawl, so that I hope to please you 

 with it 



" I am assured by Miss that the Hampshire ladies are 

 not of the sort we have found most of the English girls. But a 

 story she tells with great glee against her brother may show, 

 unsentimental and equestrian though they are, that they are 

 somewhat of the same cast. It appears that, on some occasion, 

 N and his sister, and some of their English friends, had been 

 corning home late in the evening, in a close covered waggon. 

 One young lady, with whom N had been very gracious, sud- 

 denly put out her hand, and, grasping Miss - 's, was proceed- 

 ing to give it a very loving hieroglyphic squeeze, when, feeling 



1 The work of this session comprised six papers read to the Royal Physical Society 

 on the following subjects : ' The Motives which prompt to the Study of Science ;' 

 'The Photogenic Decomposition of Water by Chlorine, Bromine, and Iodine;' 

 ' The Value of Balard's Hypochlorous Acid as a Bleaching Agent ; ' ' Report on 

 the Progress of Chemistry, in Two Parts Part I., On its Recent Application to the 

 Arts ; Part II., On its Recent Application to the Production of Light for Economical 

 Purposes;' 'On the Decomposing Powers of Hydrogen as a Metal, and its Rela- 

 tions to the Constitution of Haloid Salts ; ' ' On the Solution of Gases in Water, 

 and its Relation to Pneumatic Inquiries.' - 



To the Royal Medical Society he also read a paper on the ' Non-electric Character 

 of the Light of the 



