3^! REPORT — 1871. 



Observations on Water in Frost Rising against Gravity rather than Freezing 

 in the Pores of Moist Earth. By Professor James Thomson, LL.D. 

 In this paper Prof. Thomson, in continuation of a subject which he had brought 

 before the British A.ssociation at the Cambridge Meeting in 1862*, on the Disinte- 

 gration of Stones exposed to Atmospheric Influences, adduced some remarkable 

 instances which he had since carefully observed. In one of these, observed by 

 him in February 186-4, he showed that water from a pond in a garden had in time 

 of fi'ost raised itself to heights of from four to six inches above the water sm-face- 

 level of the pond by permeating the earth-bank, formed of decomposed gi-anite, 

 which it kept thoroughly wet, and out of the upper sm-face of which it was made 

 to ascend by the fi'ost, so as to freeze as columns of transparent ice, rather than 

 that it would freeze in the earth-pores. The columns were arranged in several 

 tiers one tier below another, the lower ones having been later formed than those 

 above them, and having pushed the older ones up. From day to day during the 

 fi'ost the earth remained unfrozen, while a thick slab of columnar ice, made up of 

 successive tiers of columns, formed itself by water coming up from the pond and 

 insinuating itself forcibly under the bases of the ice-columns so as to freeze there, 

 pushing them up, not by hydraulic pressure, but on principles which, while seem- 

 ing not to have been noticed previously to their having been suggested by the 

 author at the Cambridge Meeting, appear to involve considerations of scientific in- 

 terest, and to afibrd scope for further experimental and theoretical researches. In 

 the case referred to, the remarkable phenomenon showed itself very clearly, of 

 water passing from a region of less than atmospheric pressure in the wet pores of 

 the earth, into a place in the base of the columns where it was subject to more 

 than atmospheric pressure, and subject also to stresses unequal in different direc- 

 tions, fi-om its being loaded with the mass of ice and also with some gravel or 

 earthy substances above it ; and this action went on rather than that the water 

 woidd freeze in the pores of the moist earthy bottom on which the columns stood, 

 and which was above the water surface-level of the pond. 



ASTEONOMT. 



Note on the Secular Cooling and the Figure of the Earth. By Prof. Clifford. 



Observations on the Parallax of a Planetary Nebula. By Dr. Gill. 



On the Coming Solar Eclipse. By M. Janssen. 



On the Recent and Comitig Solar Eclipses. By J. Norman Lockyer, F.B.S. 



On the Construction of the Heavens. By R. A. Peoctor, B.A. 



On Artificial Coronas. By Professor Osborne Reynolds. 



On a Method of Estimating the Distances of some of the Fixed Stars. 

 By H. Fox Talbot, LL.D., F.R.S. 



The method proposed in this paper for ascertaining the distances of the stars 

 applies only to binary sj'stems, which are not too faint or too close to be well ob- 

 served. It has this peculiarity, that it can be applied to remote stars with as much 

 accuracy as to nearer ones, always supposing that such remote stai's axe still bright 



* Brit. Assoc. Eep. 1862, Trans, of Sect. p. 35. 



