TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS, 20 
Meteorological Observations recorded at Huggate, Yorkshire. 
By the Rey. THomas Ranxrn, 
This was the series for 1862, similar to the series which had been for several years 
furnished to the Association by the author. 
On a new Revolving Scale for Measuring Curved Lines. 
By H. Scutacintwerr. 
This instrument consisted of a small brass wheel revolving ina short handle, the 
circumference, about 2 inches round, having a number of very short steel pins 
inserted radially, the number depending on the scale to which it was desired to 
measure the curve; and the side of the wheel having graduations corresponding to 
the pins on the circumference, the zero and other remarkable divisions being dis- 
tinguished from the lesser graduations. The author entered into a minute detail 
of the several graduations it would be desirable to adopt to suit English, French, 
and German measures required for maps, courses of rivers, routes of travellers, and. 
meteorological and other curves requiring to be measured or reduced to particular 
ecales. He also entered into a comparison of this little roulette with “ Elliott’s 
Opisometer,” and the more complicated apparatus inyented by Doppler and 
Jacquard. 
On a Proof of the Dioptric and Actinic Quality of the Atmosphere at a High 
Elevation. By Professor C. Prazzt Suyrn, F.R.S. 
The chief object of the astronomical experiment on the Peak of Teneriffe, in 
1856, was to ascertain the degree of improvement of telescopic vision when both 
telescope and observer were raised some two miles vertically in the air. Distinct 
accounts have, therefore, already been rendered as to the majority of clouds being 
found far below the observer at that height, and to the air there being dry, and in 
so steady a state and homogeneous a condition that stars, when viewed in a 
powerful telescope with a high magnifying power, almost always presented clear 
and well-defined minute discs, swrounded with regularly formed rings,—a state of 
things which is the very rare exception at all observatories near the sea-level. 
Quite recently, however, the author has been engaged in magnifying some of the 
hotographs which he took in Teneriffe in 1856, at various elevations, and he finds 
in them an effect, depending on height, which adds a remarkably independent con- 
firmation to his conclusions from direct telescopic observations. The nature of the 
proof is on this wise :—At or near the sea-level a photograph could never be made 
to show the detail on the side of a distant hill, no matter how marked the detail 
might really be by rocks and cliffs illuminated by strong sunlight; even the ap- 
plication of a microscope brought out no other feature than one broad, faint, and 
nearly uniform tint. But on applying the microscope to photographs of distant 
hills taken at a high level in the atmosphere, an abundance of minute detail ap- 
peared, and each little separate “retama” bush could be distinguished on a hill- 
side 43 miles from the camera. Specimens of these photographs thus magnified 
had been introduced into the newly published volume of the ‘Edinburgh Astro- 
nomical Observations,’ four of them being silver-paper prints, and the fifth a press- 
print from a photoglyphic plate, kindly prepared and presented by Mr. Fox Talbot. 
On the Comparison of the Curves afforded by Self-recording Magnetographs at 
Kew and Lisbon, for July 1863. By B. Srewarr, FBS. 
One point of interest in this comparison is, that a disturbance began at both 
places at precisely the same moment of absolute time; and a second point is, that 
there is great general similarity between the two curves of north and south dis- 
turbance, while in the east and west disturbance-curves the likeness is much less 
marked, and it scarcely appears at all in the vertical-force curves. An extremely 
interesting feature of the Lisbon curves of vertical force and east and west force is, 
that the one is nearly exactly the reverse of the other, a peak of the one correspond- 
ing in time to a hollow in the other, a hollow to a peak, and so on throughout the 
disturbance, which extcnded over twelve days. Senhor Capello, of Lisbon, remarks 
