196 THE rRESIDENT's ADDRESS. 



re-determining in this way the distance between the centres of 

 the Sun and Earth. The transit telescope has, on this occasion, 

 been aided and checked by the modern arts of photography and 

 spectroscopy. All the principal governments of the world have 

 vied with one another, and private individuals with them, in 

 equipping costly expeditions, many of them to remote regions, 

 to put these nice appliances in operation. On the 9th of Decem- 

 ber last from stations planted thickly over a vast portion of this 

 globe, from plain and mountain, often in inhospitable climates, 

 and among peoples who were rude or inappreciative, observations 

 were effected, which, when collated, will constitute an epoch in 

 practical and theoretical astronomy. 



The liberality of our parliament in providing funds for still 

 keeping an English man-of-war, the Challenger, engaged with a 

 scientific staff of observers in investigating the currents, temper- 

 atures, chemical constitutions, fauna, the earthy natures of the 

 bottoms, &c., of deep seas, is still being rewarded by novel results. 

 In the course of our past year there have died three remarkable 

 geologists ; Elie de Beaumont (age 76), the director of the 

 geological survey of France, the pride of the French school, 

 whose theory of the relations of great granitic ranges to one 

 another, has been so confidently applied by our recently elected 

 honorary member, M. Moissenet, to explain the directions of lead- 

 ing mineral veins in this county; D'Qmalius d'Halloy (age 92), 

 the veteran Belgian author of "Elements de Geologie, numerous 

 memoirs in the Journal des Mines, &c., &c. ;" and Sir Charles 

 Lyell, Bart., the most influential, by his inductions, of all 

 geologists, and whose writings have been most potent in acquiring 

 for the English a pre-eminence in this science. These three 

 philosophers had however lived long enough to see some of the 

 most cherished hypotheses of geology tlireatened with revision 

 upon Lyell' s own principles, owing to the light that these oceanic 

 researches have thrown upon natural processes now in operation. 

 Capt. Nares is, however, no longer on board the Challenger, 

 inasmuch as to him has been entrusted the command in an arctic 

 expedition of two ships, which has been provided with every 

 requisite for scientific observations under the special conditions 

 to which it will be exposed, for it has been felt by the present 

 ministry of this country, that those men were in the right who 

 afl&rmed that when a southern power with but limited coast line. 



