Address of Sir Wm. Thomson at the Glasgow Meeting. 389 
telling you that I had there, in an instrument for measuring 
os of the transit of Venus—shown me by Professor 
arkness, a young Scotsman attracted into the United States 
Naval Service—seen for the first time in an astronomical ob- 
servatory a geometrical slide, the verdict on the disaster on 
board the Thunderer, published while I am writing this address, 
forbids me to keep any such resolution, and compels me to put 
the question, Is there in the British Navy, or in a British 
steamer, or in a British land boiler another safety-valve so con- 
structed that by any possibility, at any temperature, or under 
any stress it can jam? and to say that if there is it must be 
instantly corrected or removed. 
T ought to speak to you, too, of the already venerable Har- 
vard University, the Cambridge of America, and of the Techno- 
logical Institute of Boston, created by William Rogers, brother 
of my late colleague in this university (Glasgow), Henry Rogers, 
“ 
and of the Johns Hopkins University of Baltimore, which with 
to edit it, are left; but the appointment to a Fellowship in the 
Johns Hopkins University came a day too late to gratify his 
noble ambition. 
ut the stimulus of intercourse with American scientific 
men left no place in my mind for framing, or attempting to 
frame a report on American science. Disturbed by Newcomb’s 
Suspicions of the earth’s irregularities as a Time-keeper, I could 
think of nothing but precession and nutation, and tides and 
tonsoons, and settlements of the equatorial regions, and melting 
of polar ice. Week after week passed before I could put down 
‘wo words which I could read to you here to-day: and so I 
~~ nothing to offer you for my Address but— 
Review of Evidence regarding the Physical Condition of the Earth ; 
tts Internal Temperature; the Fluidity or Solidity of tts In- 
ferior Substance ; the Rigidity, Elasticity, Plasteity, of is 
External Figure; and the Permanence or Variability of tts 
Period and Axis of Rotation. 
_ The evidence of a high internal temperature is too well known 
‘0 need any quotation of particulars at present. Suffice it to 
Say that below the u ermost ten meters stratum of rock or 
Soil sensibly affected by diurnal and annual variations of tem- 
