194 
PROCEEDINGS 1841 — 1848. 
larly on the atmospheric S3^stem, in which he advocated the use of an 
atmospheric engine as being both less expensive and affording more 
rapid transit over a line of moderate length, say up to 20 or 30 miles. 
He compared in an elaborate manner the saving that would be 
effected by such an engine as compared with the stationary engines 
and ropes which were used between Euston Square and Camden Town 
Stations of the London and Birmingham Railway ; and also with the 
engines driven directly by steam. He had taken out a patent in 
June, 1845, for improvements in exhausting air from tubes or vessels 
for the purpose of working atmospheric railways, but whether it was 
ever practically applied does not appear. In March, 1847, he contri- 
buted a paper on the strength of materials, and the following year 
on a process of smelting iron with anthracite coal and the hot blast, 
and the use made of the gaseous escape from the blast furnaces at 
Ystalyfera Ironworks, near Swansea ; and on a mechanical commu- 
nication for the working of signals and brakes on railways. The 
latter was an ingenious application of torsion rods extending beneath 
the carriages for communicating signals between the guards and 
engine drivers on railway trains, or for the application of brakes ; 
and he strongly advocates that the three carriages next the engine 
should be supplied with self-acting brakes, and that the last three 
should have brakes worked by the guard, so that gTeater safety might 
be ensured than could possibly exist with the single brake on the van 
as then used. 
Dr. J. D. Heaton, of Leeds, was elected a member of the Society 
in 1845, and contributed two papers on the mutual relations of animal 
and vegetable existence, and on the distinctive characters of animals 
and vegetables, in which he accepted the theory that in the early 
geological world a large quantity of carbonic acid existed in the air, 
and that if the vegetation of the coal period, or some similar phen- 
omenon had not happened, the existence of animals would have been 
impossible, and he further considers that had animals never been 
created, vegetation must in time have exhausted the air of carbonic 
acid, plants would then have ceased to exist ; but by the introduction 
of animals the balance necessary to continue vegetable and animal 
life combined was secured. 
