298 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



supply of objects of interest which he has every evening 

 placed upon our table, and his valuable observations thereon; 

 and to Mr G. Logan, the Convener of the Dredging Com- 

 mittee, for his Report. 



Such has been the result of the past session. Good 

 steady work has been done, and patiently recorded. We 

 are men of work, not of talk. We have given forth no 

 voice on the grand hypothetical questions which are now 

 troubling the commonwealth of Natural Science. We have 

 been singularly apathetic as to whether or no the stock of 

 our first parent struggled upwards through innumerable 

 adversities from a monad to a man. I fear, indeed, that we 

 are prejudiced people, and would rather leave the question 

 as we found it settled many a year ago at our mother's side. 

 We have given no opinion as to whether the king of the 

 Gorillas died gloriously advancing on his terror-stricken foe, 

 and beating a far-resounding tattoo on his tympanic chest, or 

 whether he was brought to the ground by a rifle-shot in his 

 cerebellum while ignominiously bolting up a tree. But we 

 have been jotting down hard little facts, — rough diamonds, 

 which by-and-bye we may see taken up and ground, and 

 polished, and set by other hands, — central points of crystal- 

 lization, which we may find dotting the pages of great 

 standard volumes, and glimmering from amid the small 

 type of their foot-notes and indices. Sic itur ad astra. 

 These small facts are the foundations of adamant on which 

 the vast inverted pyramids of science are balanced. In 

 their discovery they are providential revelations, which, 

 though neglected for ages, may in a moment endow man- 

 kind with unhoped for welfare and prosperity. How often 

 have men, dreaming of the transmutation of all metals into 

 gold which would be useless — of the attainment of the 

 Elixir which would confer a dreadful immortality, — cast aside 

 the talent placed within their hands, and all that would 

 have made the life ordained for them useful and happy ! 

 How often, while invoking all nature to furnish us with 

 the impossible Roc's egg, have we pushed aside the little 

 dusty copper lamp, which, in return for diligent rubbing, 

 would have invested us with the powers of the genius of 



