Address of Mr. Fairbairn the President. 367 
dated this subject; the former showing that cyanogen, or cyanid of am- 
monium, is the essential element which converts wrought iron into steel ; 
the latter combining iron with nitrogen through the medium of ammo- 
nia, and then converting it into steel by bringing it at the proper tem- 
perature into contact with common coal gas. There is little doubt that in 
ganic remains embedded and preserved. The geologist has increasingly 
tended to believe that the changes which have taken place on the face of 
the globe, from the earliest times to the present, are the result of agencies 
still at work. But while it is his high office to record the distribution of 
ife in past ages, and the evidence of physical changes in the arrangement 
of land and water, his results hitherto have indicated no traces of its be- 
ments during the sinking of Dukinfield Deep Mine—one of th t 
Pits in this country—it was found that a mean increase of about one de- 
gree in Seventy-one feet occurred. If we take the ratio thus in 5 
