Sept. 6, 1877] 



NA TURE 



405 



sustained would undoubtedly have proved the Act to be defec- 

 tive. But the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 

 Animals appealed against one of these decisions ; and on June 1 5 

 judgment was given in the Common Pleas Division of Her 

 Majesty's Court of Appeal against the defendants in the cafe, 

 thus proving that the legal interpretation of the Act agreed with 

 the intention of its promoters. 



Vour Committee has satisfaction in finding that the Fisheries 

 (Oysters, Crabs, and Lobsters) Bill passed the House of Com- 

 mons on August 2, and it has now doubtless become law. It 

 appears curious that no close time had hitherto been provided 

 by the legislature for these important and favourite articles of 

 food. 



Having regard to the applications made from time to time to 

 different members of your Committee by various persons inte- 

 rested in seeing the close time principle more widely applied, 

 your Committee respectfully solicits its reappointment. 



SECTION A. — Mathematical and Physical. 



Prof. S. Haughton gave a summary of the first reduction of 

 the tidal observations made by the recent Arctic expedition. 

 The results arrived at were of great importance, and as far as 

 tidal observations were concerned, the late Arctic expedition was 

 a complete success ; they also came in at the right moment for 

 comparison with those made in the Polaris expedition. Lieut. 

 Archer had charge of the tidal observations made on board the 

 Discovt-ry, and his notes were as complete and valuable as any 

 he had ever examined. The Discoz'ery was anchored at Bilhow 

 Harbour ; the Alert lay off Cape Sheridan, and was in every 

 way less favourably situated for observing the action of the tides. 

 The Discovery rose and fell with every tide, while the Alert, on 

 the contrary, was surrounded by grounded ice of a formidable 

 kmd. Observations were made on board the Discovery every 

 hour, instead of once in four hours, as required by the instruc- 

 tions. It was an unprecedented feat that during seven months 

 observations were made every hour, and that there were only 

 six days in the whole course of that time in which he had to 

 interpolate coeliBcients. The Alert's observations required 

 coefficients for fifteen days. The results obtained by Dr. Bessel 

 from the Polaris expedition were confirmed by the English 

 expedition, viz., that there was a junction of two important tides 

 in the largest portion of Smith's Sound. The position of the 

 Discozt ry was much nearer to the point of meeting, and this 

 afforded another reason why her observations were more valuable 

 than those of the Alert. It seemed that a new type of tide had 

 been discovered, which could not be confounded either with 

 that from Baffin's Bay or that from Behring's Straits, thus con- 

 firming Sir George Kaies's opinion that Greenland is an island, 

 as this new tide could only have come round from tlie east coast 

 by a northern route. This stronger tide also presented a feature 

 of great promise in tidal theory, indicating the probability of 

 actual measurable tides occurring every eight hours. Dr. Moss, 

 of the Alert, who was present, explained the very different con- 

 ditions under which the two ships wintered. 



Sir William Thomson read a joint paper by himself and Capt. 

 Evans On the Tides of Port Louis (Mauritius) ami Freemautle 

 (Australia). The investigation had been undertaken in const- 

 quence 01 the recent Government grant for scientific researches. 

 A sum of 200/. had been voted from this grant on the urgent 

 representations of Capt. Evans and himself for the purpose of 

 investigaiing the tides of the southern hemisphere, and m.aking 

 certain definite advances in the investigation of the tides in other 

 parts of the wo: Id, particularly in the Mediterranean. The first 

 proceeds of the work done was the present paper. The obser- 

 vations showed that there was a very near approach to equality 

 between the solar diurnal tide and the lunar diurnal tide. The 

 diurnal tide at Liverpool and Freemantle was about the same, 

 but the semi-diurnal tide at Liverpool was about two hundred 

 times as great at Liverpool as at Freemantle. He hoped that 

 as the investigations were continued, they would be able not 

 only to obiain scientific results but to obtain a practical way of 

 giving tidal ir formation in a form which would be use'ul to 

 sailors — a Oe-ideiatum that had not yet been obtained. Hitherto 

 the theory ot ttie Go.ernment had been that the information 

 given in the Admiralty tide tables was sufficient for the practical 

 purposes of navigation ; and it was on that theory that Mr. Lowe, 

 when Chancellor of the Exchequer, refused the application of the 

 British Association for assistance in the matter. The fact was 



that the Admiralty tables did not give all that was necessary for 

 the purposes of navigation, so that at all events the reason given 

 by Mr. Lowe was a bad one. However the money had now 

 been obtained from the Government grant of 4,000/. for scientific 

 purposes ; a grant, the working of which would, he hoped, more 

 than fulfil all the aspirations of those who looked forward to it 

 as a great boon to science, likely to produce results beneficial to 

 the whole world. 



Prof G. Carey Foster gave an interesting paper On the Mode 

 of stating Certain Elenuntary Facts in Electricity, and Mr. J. 

 Traill Taylor described a binocular microscope of high power 

 which Capt. Abney stated overcame the many difficulties in the 

 way of obtaining microscopic pictures. Mr. S. P. Thompson 

 exhibited some new optical illusions, which were much appreciated 

 by the section, and also an improved lantern galvanoscope ; and 

 Alessrs. C. H. Steam and J. W. Swan exhibited a new form of the 

 Sprengel air-pump. Among the other papers were An Account of 

 some Recent Advances in the Lunar Theory, by Prof. J. C. Adams ; 

 On the Eclipse of Agathocles considered in Reply to Prof. New- 

 comb'' s Criticism on the Co-efficient of Acceleration of the Moon's 

 Mean Motion, by Prof. S. Haughton ; On the Lo2oer Limit of 

 the Prismatic Spectrum, by Lord Rayleigh ; On a New Unit 

 of Light for Photometry, by Mr. A. Vernon Harcourt ; On a 

 Ncio Form of Apparatus to Illustrate the Interference of Plane 

 Waves, by Mr. C. J. Woodward ; and On the Physical Pro- 

 perties of Solids and Liquids in Connection with the Earth's 

 Structure, by Prof. Hennessy. This last paper referred to 

 experiments made by the author on the motion of fluids with a 

 view to determine the conditions of viscidity and friction by 

 which such motions are influenced. The principal results had 

 been communicated to the Royal Irish Academy ; the inves- 

 tigation had reference to Hopkins's theory of the great thickness 

 of the earth's crust. 



Mr. W. H. Preece gave an account of the telephone (which 

 we give elsewhere), with illustrations, and this excited much 

 interest in the section. On a later day Dr. J. Graham Bell, who 

 arrived at Plymouth during the meeting, gave a series of ex- 

 periments with the telephone before Sections A and G con- 

 jointly to a large audience ; it is scarcely necessary to say that 

 the telephone was the chief attraction of the meeting. 



The supply of valuable papers in Section A was very good, 

 and the meeting, as far as this section is concerned, was a 

 successful one, ttiough the attendance was not so large as last 

 year at Glasgow. On account of the number of papers it was 

 necessary to divide the section into two parts on Monday and 

 Tuesday, Prof. Cayley and Lord Rayleigh being respectively 

 the chairmen of the sub-sections on these days. On Monday 

 the sub-section was occupied wholly with matnematics. There 

 were papers by Prof, de Haan On the Variation of the Modulus 

 in Elliptic Integrals, by Prof. Cayley On a Suggested Mechanical 



Integrator for the Calculation of an Integral f (X d. + y dy) 



along an Arbitrary Path, by Mr. J. W. L. Glaisher On the Values 

 of a Class of Dettriniftants, and Ori the Enumeration of the Primes 

 in Burckhardt's and Dase's Tables, by Mr. H. M. Jeflfery On 

 Cubic Curves, and by Sir William Thomson On Solutions 0/ 

 Laplace's Tidal Equation for Certain Special Types of Oscillation. 

 Prof. J. C. Adams gave An Accountof his Calculation oj the first 

 Stxty-tioo Bernoulli's Numbers. Only thirty-one had been pre- 

 viously calculated. Prof. Adams had also calculated the value 

 of the sum of the reciprocals of ttie first thousand integers to 

 260 decimals, and thence, by means of the Bernoulli's numbers, 

 the value ot Euler's constant also to 260 places. 



At the conclusion of the business of the section Sir William 

 Thomson re erred to the great loss the Association had sustained 

 by the death of Mr. Gassiot, which took place on the first day of 

 the meeting. 



SECTION C— GEOLOfiY. 



On the Exploration of some Caves in the Limestone Hills in 

 Fermanagh, Ireland, by T. Plunkett. — This paper gave an 

 account of trial explorations begun in the caves in question. 

 They will nrw be carefully explored by a committee 01 the 

 Association, aided by a grant from its funds. Large numbers of 

 bones associated with human remains are found in cave-earth 

 under stalagmite. The author also states that " a human jaw 

 was found imbedded in glacial clay and associated with scratched 

 stones." It is evident that the caverns here are of great interest 

 and importance. 



