342 



NATURE 



\_Attgust 23, 1877 



of members and associates at the annual meeting of 

 the British Association. Yet Plymouth and its sur- 

 roundings have a well-known scientific reputation, and 

 the falling off in numbers of the present meeting must 

 rather be looked for to the fact that one of the two sister- 

 towns to Plymouth has, as a body, held aloof from the 

 Association, than to any want of scientific interest 

 pervading the great port of the west of England. 



At the opening meeting on the evening of Wednesday 

 last, there was a fair attendance, but the noble Guildhall 

 was not filled. It is estimated that about 1,300 persons 

 were present, including the members of the General 

 Committee, who, as usual, were accommodated with 

 seats on the platform. The business commenced by the 

 Mayor of Plymouth introducing to the meeting the 

 President,. Prof Allen Thomson. It was, we believe, 

 intended as a graceful compliment to its host, the town 

 of Plymouth, that the British Association requested the 

 mayor to take the place of the retiring president, Prof 

 Andrews, who is absent through illness. The meeting 

 went off very well and the presidential address was, not- 

 withstanding its difficult and abstruse nature, listened to 

 with profound attention, and commanded the respect 

 which must be paid to anything coa.ing from so high an 

 authority upon embryology as Prof Allen Thomson. 



On the next morning the sectional addresses were de- 

 livered, some of which appeared in our last issue and others 

 we give in the present number. In Section A the address 

 by Prof Carey Foster, F.R.S., was warmly received and 

 elicited great applause when he spoke of the radiometer 

 and of the great value of the researches of Mr. Crookes, 

 notwithstanding the recent utterances of an influential 

 mover in Scientific circles which might have a tendency to 

 depreciate the value of those researches. Prof Haughton, 

 of Dubhn, read two papers, the first upon a method of 

 calculating the absolute duration of geological periods, 

 and the second, a reply to Prof Newcomb upon the 

 co-efficient of acceleration of the moon's mean motion as 

 illustrated by the original account of the solar eclipse of 

 Agathocles. Upon both papers an interesting discussion 

 took place. 



At the same section Prof. Osborne Reynolds read a 

 paper (which we publish to-day) upon the rate of pro- 

 gression of groups of waves and the rate at which energy 

 is transmitted by waves. The paper was illustrated by 

 a very beautiful model in which the progression of wave- 

 groups was made visible to the audien~e by means of a 

 long series of light pendulums connected elastically with 

 one another. 



Friday was a great day in Section A as far as attend- 

 ance was concerned. It had been announced the day 

 before that Mr. Preece would 'read a paper on the tele- 

 phone and show it at work, and that Sir WiUiam 

 Thomson would make a communication to the section on 

 the possibiUty of life on a meteoric stone falling on the 

 earth. In anticipation of these two papers the room of 

 Section A was crowded from an early hour, and although 

 there were several long mathematical papers on the list, 

 the non-mathematical visitors waited in the most patient 

 manner for the papers they had come to hear. It so 

 happened, however, that the papers that appeared so dry 

 to those waiting for something else were of the very 

 highest interest and value to mathematicians and astro- 

 nomers ; especially that by Prof J. C. Adams on his dis- 

 covery of original papers by Newton which proved that that 

 great philosopher had solved some of the most important 

 lunar problems, the solution of which has been till now 

 attributed to a much later date, and proving most con- 

 clusively that Newton had never fallen into the error 

 which for years had been attributed ta him. 



Sir Wm. Thomson's paper on the possibility of a meteor- 

 ite becoming the vehicle of animal life to this earth from 

 another planet, or heavenly body, was evidently listened 

 to with much enjoyment. Sir William sees no difficulty 



in the assumption that animals or germs might without 

 injury be conveyed to this earth by meteorites if protected 

 in the crevices of the meteoric mass, and much amuse- 

 ment was caused by his saying that though the outside 

 shell of a meteoric stone might be incandescent from the 

 friction caused by its flight through the terrestrial atmo- 

 sphere, yet within a crevice of that stone might be con- 

 cealed a Colorado beetle, which, falling on the earth, 

 might become the father of a large and prosperous 

 family. The anmsement caused by this quaint idea was 

 increased to roars of laughter when Prof Haughton, with 

 his well-known wit, ridiculed the idea of the transmission 

 of living animals by meteorites, and said that if Sir 

 William Thomson had spoken of a Colorado beetle 

 arriving by a meteoric stone becoming the mother of a 

 large number of baby Colorado beetles he might have 

 felt some sort of alarm, but he didn't care how many 

 papa beetles came, so long as they left the mamma 

 Colorado beetles at home. 



Mr. Preece followed with his paper on the telephone. 

 The room was crowded to excess and the paper was of 

 the highest possible interest, and not only illustrated by 

 diagrams and the instruments themselves, but the latter 

 were connected by wires with the post-office at Plymouth, 

 about a quarter of a mile ofl" and with that at Exeter 

 some fifty miles away. By means of Bell's articulating 

 telephone the human voice was distinctly conveyed and 

 conversations were carried on between the two stations. 

 Owing to induction from the parallel wires between 

 Plymouth and Exeter, there was a confused roar as from 

 hail pattering on a window pane, and no words could be 

 heard, but in his lecture in the Guildhall on the following 

 evening, the traffic was stopped for ten minutes, and a 

 conversation was carried on by the human voice between 

 Plymouth and Exeter. The Guildhall on the occasion of 

 Mr. Preece's lecture, was crammed almost to suffocation, 

 and the discourse lasted two hours and a half; the 

 lecture was upon telegraphy, but the telephone was 

 undoubtedly the chief attraction. 



The instrument was again described in Section G this 

 afternoon by the inventor, Dr. Graham Bell, who arrived 

 from Liverpool yesterday ; he was received with enthu- 

 siastic applause, and a most interesting series of 

 experiments were shown in illustration of his paper. 



At the General Committee Meeting yesterday, a letter 

 from the city of York was read by the secretary, inviting the 

 British Association to celebrate their jubilee or fiftieth 

 anniversary in that city in consideration of the fact that the 

 first meeting of the Association was held at York in 1831. 

 The invitation was unanimously accepted. 



After some quiet discussion the resolution that the Asso- 

 ciation should visit Nottingham in 1879, and Swansea in 

 1880, was carried unanimously ; whereupon Prof Haughton 

 rose, and, amidst great laughter, expressed his regret at 

 the proceedings terminating so peacefully, for, as an Irish- 

 man, he never liked to see a good fight stopped. Mr. 

 Spottiswoode is to be president at the Dublin meeting. 



Some wholesome resolutions have been approved of by 

 the Council on the regulations as to the admission of 

 papers to be read in the various sections. With regard 

 to the discontinuance of Section F the Council ask the 

 General Committee to report more fully on the reasons 

 which have induced them to recommend this step. 



Pi.VMOUTH, Wednesday 



[By Td,-gmpli\. 



The following grants were passed at the meeting of the 



General Committee held at the Royal Hotel to-day. The 



names of the members who would be entitled to call on the 



general treasurer for the respective grants are prefixed :— 



Mathematics and Physics. £ 

 Cayley, Prof.— Continuation ot Borckhardt's Tables ... 100 

 Foster, Prof. Carey.— Observation of Atmospheric Elec- 

 tricity at Madeira :j 



