364 



BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. 



[1855- 



by Railroads andCanals with the New England and the North-westein 

 States of the Union, prepared for the Canadian Commissioners of the 

 Paris Exhibition, by Thomas C. Kecfer, C.E. 



Jlercator's Projection, with the Great Circle [shortest sailing] or air 

 lines, illustrating the directions and capacities of the River St. Law- 

 rence, from Lake Erie to the Atlantic, as a means of communication 

 between Europe and the commercial centre of the Great West ; show- 

 ing also, the extension of the Northern Pacitic railway route through 

 Canada to the nearest Atlantic sea-port at Montreal. Prepared for 

 the Canadian Commissioners of the Paris Exhibition, by Thomas C. 

 Keefer, C.E. 



From J. M. Steeet, Esq. 



Report on the Niagara Railway Suspension Bridge, by John A. 

 Roebling, C.E. 



Mr. Allan having intimated that, in view of the possible extension 

 of the contemplated Institute building on Pembrolie Street, he proposed 

 to adil to his gift of a frontage on that street of ninety feet, a further 

 donation of frontage northward of sixty-four feet. 



It was resolved — That the Council gratefully accept of the valuable 

 addition, and instruct the Secretary to record on the Minutes their 

 cordial thanks for this further proof of his generous interest in the 

 advancement of the Institute. 



CANADIAN INSTITUTE BUILDING. 



The attention of Members of the Institute is respectfully called to 

 the Circular which will be found in the foregoing extracts from the 

 Minutes of Council. The present position of the Canadian Institute is 

 such as to warrant the Council in taking immediate steps for the erec- 

 tion of a suitable building, in which ample accommodation for a 

 Museum, Reading Room, and Libi-ary of Reference may be provided. 

 G. W. Allan, Esq., has increased his former valuable gift of a buildinc 

 site, 90 feet by 140, to one possessing a frontage on Pembroke Street 

 of 154 feet and a depth of 140 feet. This munificent donation will 

 allow of the construction of a building designed to admit of successive 

 additions, as the means and material of the Society increase. The 

 present number of names of members on the books of the Institute 

 exceeds four hundred, and on the completion of several matters of de- 

 tail, connected with the amalgamation of the Toronto Athenseum with 

 the Institute, the Library of Reference will contain about fifteen 

 hundi-ed volumes. The progress of the Museum has been necessarily 

 slow, owing to the state of uncertainty in which the Institute has been 

 placed with respect to the necessary accommodation for the Models 

 Birds, Minerals, Geological Specimens, Insects, &c., already accumu- 

 lated. The condition and prospects of the Institute being thus far ex- 

 tremely favorable, it is to be hoped that members will not allow the 

 present valuable opportunity of giving material assistance to the 

 building fund, to pass by unheeded. 



TwemtyfiftU Meeting of tlie Britisli Association for tlie 

 Advancement of Science.— Glasgow, 1S35. 



The Annual General Meeting for the present year of the members of 

 the British Association, opened in the City of Glasgow on the 12th 

 September, and continued until the following Monday (17th). The 

 Members present included about 1200 Gentlemen and 500 Ladies. The 

 Financial condition of the Association is represented as very favour- 

 able. The President's address was delivered in person by the Duke of 

 Argyll. The next meeting is to be held in Cheltenham. 



The following office-bearers were elected for the ensuing year: 

 — President, G. R. Daubeny, M. D.; Vice-Presidents,, The ^Earl of 

 Ducie, The Bishop of Gloucester, Sir Roderick I. Murchison, B. Baker, 

 Esq., The Rev. F. Close; Secretaries, Capt. Robertson, R.A., pj 



Beamish, Esq., W. Hugall, Esq.; Treasurers, J. Webster, Esq., J. A. 

 Gardnci-, Esq. 



The following abstracts of papers read at the difierent Sections are 

 from the Athenceum. 



On the Cuneiform In.icrij)tions of Assyria and Babylonia, by Colo- 

 nel Rawiinson. — Col. Rawlinson began by saying he feared the 

 vastness, as well as to a great extent the novelty, of the subject would 

 prevent him doing it anything like justice in the very limited time he 

 had at his disposal. The excavations which had been carried on in 

 Assyria and Babylonia had been continued through six or seven years 

 — they had i-anged over tracts of country 1,000 miles in extent — the 

 marbles excavated would be sufBcient to load three or four ships, and 

 the historical information contained in them would exceed ten thou- 

 sand volumes in clay. Of course, in dealing with such a subject he 

 could only select a portion of it, — and even of that he could only com- 

 municate the heads. The part to which he wished to direct their 

 attention was the Cuneiform Inscriptions. This phrase merely signified 

 the wedged-shaped form of writing, and was not employed in any 

 particular language or by one particular nation. The cuneiform 

 system of letters was a species of picture-writing, invented, not by the 

 Semitic inhabitants of Babylon, but by those who preceded them. 

 This writing was, however, reduced by the Semitic race to letters, and 

 adapted to the articulation of their language. Their mode of writing 

 consisted of several elements. There was the ideographic, or picttu-e- 

 writing, and the phonetic, which was eqivalentto the alphabet of their 

 language. He had been fortunately able to obtain among the ruins of 

 Nineveh a tablet which actually exhibited the several developments of 

 this system of writing into a regular alphabet. The cuneiform inscrip- 

 tions were divided into thx-ee branches — Persian, Scythic, and Assyrian; 

 . — and it was on the third of these that he wished to say a few words. 

 He then proceeded to explain how the decipherment of these inscrip- 

 tions had been obtained. About twenty years ago his attention had 

 been directed to a series of inscriptions in cuneiform characters on a 

 rock at Behistlin, near Kermaixhah. The tablet was d-ivided into 

 three compartments, giving three diff'erent versions of the same 

 inscription, and on the simplest of these, the Persian, he set to work, 

 and found by comparing it with the two others that they corresponded, 

 with the exception of two or three groups, from which, on further 

 investigation, he made out — Ilystaspes, Darius, and Xerxes. By 

 means of these proper names he obtained an insight into the Persian 

 alphabet, and by analyzing the names of the ancestors of Darius and 

 Hystaspes, and obtaining a list of the tributary provinces of Persia, 

 he managed to form the alphabet. This was, however, but the first 

 step ; the great object being to decipher the Assyrian inscription, and 

 this could only be done by comparing it with the Persian. The tablet 

 was situated on the face of the rock, 500 feet from the ground, with a 

 precipice above it of 1,200 feet, and, in order to reach it, it was neces- 

 sary to stand on the top rung of a ladder placed almost perpendicular. 

 Nor was this all, for there was still the Babylonian to be copied, and 

 it was engraved on the overhanging ledge of rock, which there was no 

 means of reaching but by fastening tent-pegs into the rock, hanging a 

 rope from one to the other, and, while thus swinging in mid-air, 

 copying the inscription. An insight into the system of writing being 

 thus obtained, the fortunate discovery of the ruins of Nineveh furnished 

 a great mass of documents to which it might be applied. Wherever 

 they had found tumuli, or any appearance of a ruin, trenches were 

 sunk, galleries opened, and in almost every case they came upon the 

 remains of inscribed tablets. Whether it was the king who wished to 

 issue a bulletin, or a shopkeeper to make up his accounts, the same 

 process had to be gone through of stamping it on clay tablets. The 

 decipherment of these inscriptions led to important results in an 

 ethnological point of view, both as indicating the race to which the 

 writers belonged, and affording important information with reference 

 to the habitat of races and their migrations. Among the many points 

 which they were now enabled satisfactorily to settle, he alluded to the 

 connexion between the Turanian and Hamic families, and to the occu- 

 pation of Western Asia by the Scythic, and not the Semitic race. He 

 also mentioned that from the inscriptions he believed it would be 

 shown that the Queen of Sheba came from Idumea. As to the 

 advantages conferred on geography by these discoveries, he would not 

 attempt to give in detail the ramifications of geographical knowledge 

 which had been thus obtained. He would proceed to the most inter- 

 esting and important branch of the subject, the historical. An erro- 

 neous impression was at one time in circulation that the information 

 obtained from the inscriptions was adverse to Scripture. But so much 

 was it the reverse of this, that if they were to draw up a scheme of 

 chronology from the inscriptions, without having seen the statements 



