Aug. 10, 1871] 
NATURE 291 

The lectures and conversaziones have been great suc- 
cesses, the former we hope to be able to give at some 
length next week. We must not conclude this letter, 
written from Edinburgh—the den of the great “Red 
Lion” Forbes—without adding that the Red Lions dined 
together on Monday, Lion King Rankine occupying the 
chair. 
The following pipers were contributed to this section 
by unknown au hors :— 
TO THE CHIEF MUSICIAN ON NUBLA 
A Tynpatuic Ope. Tune: ‘THE Broox ” 
I come from fields of fractured ice, 
Whose wounds are cured by squeezing, 
‘They melt and cool, but in a trice 
Grow warm again by freezing ; 
Here in the frosty air the sprays, 
With fern-like hoar frost bristle, 
Their liquid stars, their watery rays, 
Shoot through the solid crystal. 
T come from empyrean fires, 
From microscopic spaces, 
Where molecules with fierce desires 
Shiver in hot embraces ; 
The atoms clash, the spectra flash, 
Projected on the screen, 
The double D, Magnesian b, 
And Thallium’s living green. 
This crystal tube the electric ray 
Shows optically clean, 
No dust or cloud appear—but stay: 
All has not yet been seen ; 
What gleams are these of heavenly blue, 
What wondrous forms appearing ? 
What fish of cloud can this be, through 
The vacuous spaces steering ? 
I light this sympathetic flame, 
My slightest wish to answer, 
I sing, it sweetly sings the same, 
It dances with the dancer ; 
I whistle, shout, and clap my hands, 
T hammer on the platform, 
The flame bows down to my commands 
Tn this form and in that form. 
THE BRiTISH ASS 
(Sung by a Cub at the Red Lions Feed, Edinburgh, August 7, 1871) 
Air; “Tue British GRENADIERS ” 
Some men go in for Science, 
And some go in for Shams, 
Some roar like hungry Lions, 
And others bleat like Lambs ; 
But there’s a Beast that at this Feast 
Demands a special glass, 
So let us bray, that long we may 
Admire th: British Ass! 
With a tow, row, row, &c, &c. 
On England's fragrant clover 
This Beast delights to browse, 
But sometimes he’s a rover 
To Scotland's broomy knowes ; 
For there he finds above all kinds 
The Plant that doth surpass 
The Thistle rude—the sweetest food 
That feeds the British Ass ! = eee 
We've read in ancient story 
How a great Assyrian swell 
Came down from all his glory 
With hornéd beasts to dwell.] 
If you would know how it happened so, 
‘That a King should feed on grass, 
In Section D, Department B, 
He had joined the British Ass ! 
On Grecian senses charming 
Tell the music of the spheres, 
But voices more alarming 
Salute our longer ear 
A swell profound doth now propound 
How life did come to pass, 
From world to world the seeds were hurled, 
Whence sprung the British Ass ! 
In our wandering through Creation 
We meet these burning stones, 
That bring for propagation 
The germs of flesh and bones. 
And is it not a thrilling thought 
That a huge misguided mass 
Will come some day to sweep away 
Our dear old British Ass! 
| Fluid State of Matter, by Prof. James Thomson, of Belfast. 


The child who knows his father 
Has aye been reckoned wise, 
But some of us would rather 
Be saved that sweet surprise, 
If it be true that when we view] 
A comely lad or lass, 
We find the trace of the monkey’s face 
In the gaze of the British Ass! 
SECTION A, 
THURSDAY, Aug. 3.—Speculations on the Continuity of the 
The 
author proceeding from the researches of Dr. Andrews on the 
| Continuity of the Liquid and Gaseous States of Matter, in which 
it has been discovered that there is gradual transition between 
the ordinary liquid and the ordinary gaseous states of the same 
matter by courses passing through temperatures and pressures 
above those at which boiling can take place, showed that there is 
probably also a theoretical continuity having a real and trne sig- 
nificance directly across temperatures and pressures of boiling 
points. This he showed by supposing there to be conditions 
partly stable and practically attainable, and partly unstable, cor- 
responding to curved reflex junctions of the curves shown by 
Dr. Andrews for the gaseous and liquid states,* where they are 
interrupted at the boiting breach of continuity. As these new 
views of Prof. Thomson form the subject of a paper submitted 
tothe Royal Society and intended to appear in an early number 
of the Proceedings, we hope to givea fuller account of them in 
| a future issue.—Prof. Thomson also drew the attention of the 
Section to the existence for each of the various substances, 
(water, or carbonic acid, for instance,) of a remarkable point of 
pressure and temperature, at which alone the substance can exist 
in three states, solid, liguzd, and gaseous, together in contact with 
one another. This point of pressure and temperature he 
designates as the ¢riple point ; and he shows how this point belongs 
to three important curves, as being their intersection. On this 
subject also we propose soon to give a fuller exposition of Prof, 
Thomson’s views. 
SECTION B. 
On Thursday, after the address of the President, Dr. Andrews, 
which has already appeared in our columns, Mr. Dewar pre- 
sented his Report on Thermal Equivalents of the Oxides of 
Chlorine. The results were merely preliminary, and exhibited 
in a remarkable manner the difficulties attending this class of in- 
vestigations. Dr, Gladstone followed with a paper, which he 
had prepared in conjunction with Mr. Alfred Tribe, On Some 
Experiments on Chemical Dynamics. We commenced by re- 
ferring to a paper recently communicated to the Royal Society, 
in which it was shown that in various decompositions of metallic 
solutions the chemical change, in a given time, is not in propor- 
tion to the amount of salt present, but that twice the quantity 
gives three times the chemical action, and also that while silver 
is deposited in copper, in the decomposition of nitrate of silver 
by copper an actual passage of the nitric element towards the 
copper plate occurs. 
In the present paper, the authors exhibited this latter pheno- 
menon in a dissected form, with other observations. A copper 
plate was immersed in copper nitrate, and a silver plate in 
silver nitrate ;* while the two metals were connected by a wire, 
and the liquids bya porous cell. Silver deposited upon the silver 
plate, and the copper plate dissolved ; the sp. gr. of the copper 
nitrate increased from 1‘OI5 to 1°047, and only a trace of this 
salt passed into the cell which originally contained silver nitrate. 
The passage of SO, (SO, H, ?) was also found to take place by 
an analogous experiment. 
Similar experiments were made in which the nitrate of silver 
was kept constant, but the nitrate of copper was increased in 
equivalent multiples. It was found that the silver deposited 
increased with the increase in copper salt, being about double 
when the copper salt was seven times as strong, and that tke 
effect of successive additions gradually diminished. This is in 
strict accordance with other experiments showing that when the 
copper pla'e is immersed in a mixture of the nitrate of copper and 
silver, the amount of silver deposited is increased, though ina 
diminishing ratio, by successive additions of copper salt. That 
this acceleration is not produced by a copper salt only was proved 
by repeating the experiments with various other nitrates. The 
tabulated results show that the increased effect does not de- 
* The reader will find these curves engraved in Nature for August 4, 
1870, p. 279. 
