624 REPORT—1899. 
account of the motions, we might imagine some structure in the ether, and such 
stresses between the ether and matter that our physical explanations should still 
hold. But, as Professor Ward says, such ethereal constructions would present no 
warrant for their reality or consistency. Indeed they would be mere images in 
the surface of things to account for what goes on in front of the surface, and would 
have no more reality than the images of objects in a glass. 
Tf we have full confidence in the descriptive method, as applied to living and 
non-living matter, it appears to me that up to the present it teaches us that while 
in non-living matter we can always find similarities, that, while each event is like 
other events, actual or imagined, in a living being there-are always dissimilarities. 
Taking the psychical view—the only view which we really do at present take—in 
the living being there is always some individuality, something different from any 
other living being, and full prediction in the physical sense, and by physical methods, 
is impossible. If this be true, the loom of Nature is weaving a pattern with no mere 
geometrical design. The threads of life, coming in we know not where, now 
twining together, now dividing, are weaving patterns of their own, ever increasing 
in intricacy, ever gaining in beauty. 
The following Papers and Report were read :— 
1. On the Spectroscopical Examination of Contrast Phenomena. 
By Georce J. Burcu, JA. 
The author has shown that by exposing the eye to bright sunlight in the focus 
of a burning glass, behind a screen composed of ordinary ruby glass in conjunction 
with a gelatine film stained with magenta, a condition of temporary red-blindness 
may be induced, during which red flowers, such as scarlet geraniums, appear 
black, and red roses blue, although the observer is still perfectly able to distinguish 
colours composed of green, blue,and violet. Similarly blindness to green, to blue, 
or to violet may be produced by fatiguing the retina with monochromatic light of 
sufficient intensity and of suitable colour. Experiments of the same character by 
Aitken, Hunt, Hess, and others, have since been brought to the author’s notice. 
His own, which were made quite independently many years ago, differ from theirs 
in degree rather than in kind, the light used by these observers having apparently 
been not sufficiently intense to produce the full effect. 
These phenomena, in the author’s opinion, are unfavourable to the theory of 
Hering, but support that of Young and Helmholtz, with a slight modification. 
They indicate the existence of a separate sensation of blue as well as of violet, a 
possibility which Young was prepared to admit, though he could find no proof 
of it. 
On Young's hypothesis all complementary colours and all contrast effects may 
be represented as coming under the same category as absorption spectra, in that 
they are due to the subtraction of something from the normal sensations which 
should result from the physical conditions of the experiment. According to 
Hering’s theory, complementary colours cannot be regarded as due to the mere 
absence, or diminution, or suppression of certain elements of a complex sensation. 
So far as regards the effect of continuous light, the phenomena of artificial 
colour-blindness seem conclusive against the view of Hering. The author described 
apparatus by which the methods of spectroscopic analysis may be applied to the 
investigation of the phenomena of complementary colours and of successive 
contrast by intermittent light. 
2. Preliminary Note on the Variation of the Specific Heat of Water. By H. 
L. Cattenpar, JA., F.RS., Quain Professor of Physics at University 
College, London, and H. T. Barnus, J.A.Sc., Demonstrator of Physics, 
McGill College, Montreal. 
At the meeting of the British Association at Toronto in 1897 the authors 
communicated a note describing their new method of determining the specific 
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