1863.] 



Presidenfs Address, 



29 



the measurements of degrees and of pendulum experiments. As a third 

 and thoroughly distinct method of investigation, it seems at least well 

 deserving of a trial. 



Swedish naturalists are not likely to undervalue the interest attaching 

 to careful examinations of the constancy or variation of the elevation of 

 land above the sea-level; and I may therefore venture to refer them to a 

 paper in the Phil. Trans, for 1824 (Art. xvi.), written from Spitzbergen 

 itself in July 1823, containing the particulars of a barometrical and trigo- 

 nometrical determination of the height (approximately 1644 English feet) 

 of the well-defined summit of a conspicuous hill in the vicinity of Fair- 

 haven. The barometrical comparison was repeated on several days, the 

 barometer on the summit of the hill being stationary, and the observation 

 of the two barometers strictly simultaneous, the stations being visible from 

 each other by a telescope. The height as given by the two methods, 

 barometrical and trigonometrical, was in excellent accord. The hill may 

 be identified with certainty by the plan which accompanies the paper 

 referred to : it is of easy access, and may be remeasured with little diffi- 

 culty. 



It will be rem.embered that a few years ago the attention of the E-oyal 

 Society was called by the Foreign Office to the circumstance of several 

 glass bottles with closed necks having been found on the shores of the 

 west coast of Nova Zembla, leading to a conjecture that they might afford 

 some clue to the discovery of the missing ships of Sir John Franklin's 

 Expedition. The inquiries instituted by the Royal Society traced the 

 bottles in question to a recent manufacture in Norway, where they are 

 used as floats to the fishing-nets employed on that coast. These floats, 

 accidentally separated from the nets, had been carried by the stream- 

 current which sets along the Norwegian coast round the North Cape, and 

 thus afforded evidence of the prolongation of the current to Nova Zembla. 

 The Swedish Expedition, in the course of its summer exploration, found 

 on the northern shore of Spitzbergen several more of these bottle-floats, 

 some of which even bore Norwegian marks and names, supplying evidence, 

 of considerable geographical interest, of the extension of the Norwegian 

 stream-current to Spitzbergen, either by a circuitous course past the shores 

 of Nova Zembla, or by a more direct offshoot of which no previous know- 

 ledge existed. It is thus that step by step v/e improve our knowledge of 

 the currents which convey the waters of the more tem.perate regions to the 

 Polar seas and produce effects whicli are traceable in many departments of 

 physical geography. 



The application of gun-cotton to warlike purposes and engineering 

 operations, and the recent improvements in its manufacture, have been the 

 subject of a Report prepared by a joint Committee of the Chemical and 

 Mechanical Sections of the British Association, consisting chiefly of Fellows 

 of the Royal Society. The Report was presented at the Meeting in New- 



