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Proceedings of the British Association, 



in which they originate in the scale of nations, and gratify the most 

 reasonable feelings of national pride, while they fulfil to the most 

 unrestricted extent the obligations of our common humanity. 



Mr. Murchison moved the thanks of the Association to the Presi- 

 dent for his excellent address. 



The Marquis of Northampton seconded the motion, and took the 

 opportunity of commenting on Mr. Whewell's preliminary obser- 

 vations. He differed from him in the expediency of suspending the 

 meetings of the Association ; he believed that every town where it 

 had met would be glad to receive it again, and dwelt very strongly 

 on the claims of York to receive the Association a second time. He 

 said that the President's speech proved, that if the Sections should 

 cease to exist, it could not be said, " carent vate sacro." He also 

 deemed it necessary to state, that when he waited on Sir Robert Peel 

 to urge the propriety of continuing the Magnetic Observations, which 

 are now carried on in fifteen places, he was accompanied by the 

 Ambassador of Russia. This was a proof of the beneficial influence of 

 science as a bond of union between nations, and a pledge for the 

 progress of peace and civilization. — Athenceum, July 2nd, 1842. 



Abstract o/M. Fourier's Theory of Heat. — From " The Revolutions 

 of the Globe Familiarly Described," by Alexander Bertrand, m.d. 



The questions relative to the temperature of the terrestrial globe, 

 of which the ancient philosophers had a faint glimpse, were not 

 yet susceptible of a satisfactory solution ; and the human mind, 

 on this subject, as on all those which it enters upon prematurely, 

 veered, in succession, until these latter times, from one error to its 

 opposite. — Thus, while Buffon, too much prepossessed with the 

 hypothesis of a central fire yet burning beneath the cooled shell 

 of the planetary bodies, attributed an almost exclusive influence 

 upon the temperature of their surface to the heat which these 

 bodies must have formerly imbibed, other physiologists, denying 

 even the reality of this primitive heat, the existence of which every 

 thing proves, were inclined to explain the thermometrical state of 

 the whole globe, by the influence of the solar heat alone. Such 

 exclusive views can no longer be admitted. It is now demonstra- 

 ted, that different causes affect the temperature of the terrestrial 



