1864.] 



Presidenfs Address, 



499 



notice of wMch, as being presented to us from abroad, I will give the 

 first place. 



This communication forms a valuable contribution to a great subject 

 — the history of the Sea. It contains a full and compendious inquiry 

 into the constituents of the water of the ocean, divided into seventeen 

 geographical regions, each of which is studied separately from samples 

 taken both at the surface and at various depths. An accurate view is 

 thus gained for the first time of the sea as a whole, and conclusions of 

 great generality are obtained. The minute analytical processes fol- 

 lowed in several hundred analyses were so conducted as, in the opinion 

 of competent judges, to inspire entire confidence. They confirm the 

 presence in sea-water of the twenty-five elements already reported 

 by other chemists, and add two others, boron and aluminium, to the 

 number. But it is chiefly by the application of the data thus obtained 

 to the elucidation of various geographical problems of great and general 

 interest that we are led to recognize the full importance of this memoir. 

 I may permit myself to notice one or two of the most remarkable of the 

 conclusions established by it. 



In the Atlantic the saline ingredients in the sea-water (the samples 

 being taken at proper distances from the land) decrease with increasing 

 depth. This is found to hold good even to extreme depths. The exist- 

 ence of a Polar current in the depths of the Atlantic is hence inferred, 

 since it is a well-established fact that the equatorial seas are richer, 

 and the polar seas poorer, in saline ingredients. 



The large amount of saline contents found by analysis of the water 

 of the well-known current flowing from north-east to south-west, be- 

 tween Iceland and the east coast of G-reenland, shows it to be, not as 

 heretofore supposed, a polar current, but one of equatorial origin. The 

 inference is, that it is a returning branch of the great Grulf-stream which 

 we have recently had reason to recognize as extending to the shores of 

 Nova Zembla and to the north coasts of Spitzbergen, carrying to Nova 

 Zembla the floats of the Norwegian fishermen, and to Spitzbergen the 

 same floats, mingled with wood from Siberia. May it not be possible 

 that the "iceless sea, teeming with animal life," described by the ad- 

 venturous American explorer Dr. Kane as viewed from the promontory 

 which formed the northern limit of his research, is, as he himself sur- 

 mised, but an extension of the same equatorial stream which produces 

 correspondingly abnormal eff'ects at Spitzbergen, as well as at every 

 other point to which its course has been traced ? 



When physical researches shall be resumed within the circle which 

 surrounds the Pole, this perhaps will be one of the earliest problems to 

 receive solution — a solution rendered now so simple by the method of 

 inquiry which Professor Porchhammer has made known to us. 



In Astronomy the most important results in the year are Sir John 



