MEMOIRS AND PROCEEDINGS 



OF 



THE MANCHESTER LITERARY AND 

 PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. 



Ordinary Meeting, October ist, 1895. 

 Henry Wilde, F.R.S., President, in the Chair. 



The thanks of the members were voted to the donors 

 of the books upon the table. 



Reference was made to the loss by death, since the 

 last meeting, of Mr. John Lawson Kennedy, Professor 

 W. C. Williamson, LL.D., F.R.S., Thomas Henry 

 Huxley, M.D., Ph.D., LL.D., D.C.L., P.P.R.S., &c, 

 and M. Louis Pasteur, Foreign Member R.S., Membre 

 de l'lnstitut, &c, ordinary or honorary members of the 

 Society. 



Mr. Henry Wilde, F.R.S. (the Chair being taken 

 by Dr. Edward Schunck, meanwhile), read a paper on 

 " Helium, and its place in the Natural Classification of 

 Elementary Substances." A discussion ensued, in which 

 Professor H. B. Dixon, F.R.S. , Professor Osborne 

 Reynolds, F.R.S., and others took part. The spectrum 

 of helium obtained from Norwegian cleveite was exhibited, 

 and a method of distilling the same gas from some heavy 

 zirconiferous sand containing uranium, and found in large 

 deposits on the coast of Brazil, was also explained and 

 experimentally illustrated, the spectrum of the gas thus 

 produced being likewise exhibited. 



