TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 13 



" Addressed, by desire, to the Chairman of the Committee of the British 

 Association, Royal Society, Somerset House. 



" Mr. Nasmyth having thus made no reply to their request to be allowed to 

 see his original paper, your Committee cannot proceed further in the inquiry. 



(Signed) " Leonard Horner, Chairman." 



The Council having failed in their frequently I'epeated endeavours to obtain 

 Mr. Nasmyth's original papers, or assured copies of them, for the purpose of 

 comparison with Mr. Nasmyth's abstract, are unable, on the one hand, to 

 publish the latter, authenticated as a faithful report of the papers read by 

 that gentleman at the meeting at Birmingham, or, on the other hand, to de- 

 cide that it is not a faithful report of those papers. They conceive that when 

 due consideration is given to the caution proper to be exercised in sanction- 

 ing the publication of papers in a case of disputed claim as to priority of dis- 

 covery; — and when it is remembered that Mr. Nasmyth's abstract, however 

 correct it may be, was not drawn up until several months after his papers were 

 read ; — and that in the interim the discovery which he claims for himself 

 was communicated as an original discovery by Mr. Owen to the French Insti- 

 tute, and published as such ; — the propriety of requiring the original docu- 

 ments, or assured copies of them, for the purpose of authenticating the abs- 

 tract, will be universally assented to. 



The Council would nevertheless feel great regret, that any man of science 

 who had favoured the Association with the communication of his researches, 

 should think that he had reason to be dissatisfied with the way in which they 

 were received ; and as Mr. Nasmyth, while withholding the original papers, 

 which are his undoubted property, still presses the publication of his abstract 

 in the volumes of the Association Reports ; and as the Council willingly ad- 

 mit that it was furnished in strict compliance (presuming its fidelity) with the 

 request of the Assistant General Secretary, under whose superintendence the 

 volumes are published ; they have decided on complying with his request for 

 its insertion in the present volume, though they are unable to pronounce 

 on its fidelity. They consider it right to publish at the same time that con- 

 temporaneous report of Mr. Nasmyth's two papers read before the Medi- 

 cal Section, which Avas furnished by himself to the Editor of the Athenasuni 

 Journal, and whicli is now reprinted from the original manuscripts so furnished 

 by Mr. Nasmyth, preserved by the Editor of the Athenaeum, and placed by 

 him at the disposal of the Council. To these they have added Dr. Lloyd's 

 contemporaneous abstract of Mr. Nasmyth's paper, read to the Geological Sec- 

 tion, which may indeed be considered to have the best claim of the three for 

 insertion in the volumes of the Association, having been furnished, in strict 

 conformity with the rules, by the official organ of the Geological Section. 

 The members of the Association who take an interest in this branch of Phy- 

 siological research, and wish to know what Mr. Nasmyth communicated to 

 the meeting at Birmingham, will thus have before them the best information 

 which it has been in tiie power of the Council to procure. 



The Council have also thought it right to prefix to these documents a concise 

 and continuous relation of their proceedings, which they now draw to a close, in 

 a case of considerable delicacy and difficulty, the only one of its kind which has 

 occurred in the history of the Association ; and they hope that by an adhe- 

 rence to the regulations which now prescribe the early publication of the an- 

 nual volume, and by an observance of the caution inserted in the circular 

 sent to members preparatory to the meetings, to the effect that — authors of 

 communications to the Sections will be expected, before the close of the 

 meeting, to present concise and careful abstracts to the Secretaries of the 



