British Association. 293 
tion of their names could be at all justified. The discourse, as a whole, 
was highly respectable; but in those departments of engineering in which 
he is eminent he observed a remarkable reserve, and upon the whole, 
without injury to our readers, we may suffer it to pass without quotation. 
We may add, however, that a vote of thanks was very gracefully pro- 
posed and eloquently advocated by Lord Stanley. 
Section A. (Physical and Mathematical Science) was opened by the 
Astronomer-Royal, G. B. Arry, the president, by laying down the legi- 
timate field of the Section, and rules for the guidance of authors who had 
papers to produce or remarks to make. His idea was, that after papers 
were read, conversation upon each, so far as time permitted, was not only 
allowed, but courted. And here perfect liberty was allowed to each to 
dissent from the opinions of others, and each was to receive in perfect 
good humour the unsparing slaughter of any of his opinions, however 
dear they might be in his own estimation. However, he wished to give 
two or three cautions, which would be found most useful: first, that 
science, pure science, was alone their object, and that more serious sub- 
jects were entirely forbidden ; secondly, that each should, to avoid the 
slightest appearance of personality, address the meeting through the 
Chair; thirdly, that he must in that chair be a perfect despot; that his 
dictum must, for the time, be law; and, for an instance, they must not 
feel displeased if he peremptorily rejected all discussions about perpetual 
motion, the trisection of an angle, or any subject which would lead to the 
subversion of any of the well-established foundations of any of the exact 
sciences. One suggestion he would venture to throw out to those who 
had communications to make on the more transcendental branches of 
science, viz. to hold over for a more suitable occasion any subject which 
could not be made quite intelligible by an oral exposition. He exempli- 
fied this by reading the title of one of the papers proposed to be read to 
the Section, adding, that he had no doubt that the meaning of this was 
clearly understood by the author himself, but, for his part, he (the Astro- 
nomer Royal) had not a conception of its meaning. He need scarcely 
add, that he hoped authors, in avoiding this error, would not fall into 
the opposite, of beginning at the very first principles of the science con- 
nected with their subject. 
The first paper in the Section was a report on the progress of celestial 
photography since the meeting at Aberdeen, by Warren de la Rue, the 
most interesting facts in which we have already given as an extract from 
the report of the Kew committee ; to which it may be here added, that this 
most indefatigable photographer has also obtained good photographs of 
the fixed stars, and such constellations as Orion, and even the Pleiades, 
though comets. have altogether refused to give pictures. A large photo- 
graph of the sun, three feet in diameter, was also exhibited. In the con- 
versation. which ensued, after an expression of admiration by Dr Robin- 
son, and a hope that Mr De la Rue would be assisted in the heavy expense 
which his experiments involved, the Astronomer-Royal, following in a 
similar strain, took occasion to remark that the photograph now exhibited 
settled a point of much interest which had formerly been matter of con- 
troversy between him and M. Arago, the latter maintaining that the in- 
tensity of the sun’slight did not decrease towards the edge of the disk, 
while he (the Astronomer-Royal) maintained the contrary—an opinion 
which the photograph settled in his favour. 
There then followed a paper on the distribution of fog around the 
British islands, by Dr J. H. Gladstone, which was followed by an ani- 
mated discussion, of which the upshot was a proposal by the Astronomer 
Royal, that as they could not agree what amount of obscuration of vision 
NEW SERIES.—VOL. XIV. NO, 11.—ocT. 1861. Qp 
