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 Keport. 
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 aud 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 Eoc's egg, have w^e pushed aside the little 
dusty copper lamp, which, in return for diligent rubbing, 
would have invested us with the powers of the genius of 
