1881.] Dr Hunt, Celestial Chemistry, dx. 129 



granite being produced from a rock which has undergone fusion. 

 What I hold is that the crystalline character of granite is a result 

 of metamorphosis. If the veins were intruded in a fused state 

 into crevices in a more fusible rock already solidified, they must 

 from the predominance of quartz in them have solidified at once 

 into a glassy mass which afterwards can only have become devi- 

 trified and the materials segregated into comparatively large crys- 

 tals by a process which goes on very slowly indeed, and would be 

 almost certainly slower in a vitrified than in a more porous mass. 



November 28, 1881. 

 Mr F. M. Balfour, President, in the Chair. 



Mr W. L. Mollison, M.A., Clare College, Mr W. B. Allcock, 

 Emmanuel College, and Mr H. T. Stearn, M.A., King's College, 

 were balloted for and duly elected Fellows of the Society. 



The following communications were made to the Society : 



(1) Celestial Chemistry from the time of Newton. By T. 

 Sterry Hunt, LL.D., F.RS. 



The late W. Vernon Harcourt, in 1845 1 , called attention to 

 the remarkable perception of great chemical truths which is ap- 

 parent in the Queries appended to the third book of Newton's 

 Optics, as well as in his Hypothesis touching Light and Colour. 

 With regard to the latter, Harcourt then remarked, "it has, I 

 think, scarcely been quoted, except by Dr Young, and its existence 

 is but little known, even among the best informed scientific 

 men." The essay in question was read before the Royal Society, 

 December 9th and 16th, 1675, but remained unpublished till 

 1757, when Birch, at that time secretary to the Society, printed 

 it, not without verbal inaccuracies, in the third volume of his 

 History of the Royal Society, a work intended to serve as a 

 supplement to the Philosophical Transactions up to that date. 

 In 1846, at the suggestion of Harcourt, the Hypothesis of Newton 

 was again printed in the L. E. and D. Philosophical Magazine 

 (Volume xxix.), and it subsequently appeared in the Appendix 

 to the first volume of Brewster's Memoirs of Newton, in 1855. 



The time has come for farther inquiries into the science of 

 Newton, and I shall endeavour to show that a careful examination 

 of the writings of our great Natural Philosopher in the light of 



1 L. E. and D. Philos. Magazine [3] xxvm. 106 and 478 ; also xxix. 185. 



