1887.] Mr R. T. Omond on Glories, Halos, and Coronm. 327 
At 14 h 10 m . 
At 16 h 10 m . 
2 ° 6 ' 
3° 35' 
Radius of red 1 , 
red 2 , 
red 3 , 
Note. — Fig. 10 is a sketcli of rainbow seen at Fort -William on 
16th August 1887, at about 17 h , by A. Rankin, J. Miller, W. 
Stewart, and D. M £ Kenzie. 
Dr JOHN MURRAY, Yice-President, in the Chair. 
The following Communications were read : — 
1. Thermal Conductivity of Iron, Copper, and German 
Silver. By A. C. Mitchell, Esq. Communicated by 
Professor Tait. 
2. On the Probability that a Marriage entered into by a 
Man of any Age, will be Fruitful. By T. B. Sprague, M.A. 
In a paper which I read before the Society in 1879, I gave the 
results of an investigation I had made with the object of deter- 
mining the probability, that a man marrying at any age over 40, 
will, or will not, have children ; and I have now extended the 
same enquiry to men of all ages. The statistics upon which my 
former conclusions rested, related to 339 marriages entered into by 
peers and their near relations, above the age of 40, and were ex- 
tracted from Lodge’s Peerage for the year 1871. For all statistical 
enquiries this work is, in my opinion, greatly preferable to any of 
the other works that give records of the British Peerage. The 
principal ground for this opinion is, that Lodge usually gives the 
dates of birth of the daughters of each family, as well as those of 
the sons ; whereas other Peerages generally omit those dates, and 
place the names of the daughters (without any dates) after the 
names of the sons, so that it is impossible to tell whether 
Monday, 4 th July 1887. 
