462 
Proceedings of the Boyal Society 
verance, considerable expense, and varying results. They have, 
however, not been without fame and favour in the scientific world, 
for I found, in the library of the Society, thanks to the attention of 
our Librarian, a work and an accompanying letter which indicate 
more powerfully than any words of mine could do, what interest 
and importance is still attached to the results of his experiments by 
men of science on the Continent. The letter is addressed to the 
President of the Eoyal Society of Edinburgh by M. Daubree, who 
therein mentions that he is President of the Academy of Sciences 
of the Institute of Prance; it is dated in June 1879, and was 
received by my predecessor in the chair. It is in the following 
terms (I translate the substance of it). He requests the President 
to beg of the Society to accept from him a copy of a work which 
he is in the course of publishing, entitled Synthetic Studies in 
Experimental Geology. He proceeds — It was on the soil of Scot- 
land that the powerful and fertile genius of Hutton was inspired, 
and it was in the Transactions of your celebrated Society that 
James Hall published in the beginning of the century two papers 
of high importance to experimental geology. My expression 
of gratitude (liommage) is thus not without good reason.” The 
work itself is a record of a series of most elaborate experi- 
ments, proceeding avowedly on Hutton’s theory, and on the lines 
of Hall, accompanied by illustrative drawings, and intended to ex- 
hibit the effects of various mechanical agents in combination with 
heat or fusion on the materials of the crust of the earth. 
The scientific merit of these views I do not pretend to judge ; but 
it is at least a striking tribute to our Pounders to find that their 
labours at the commencement of the century should be so highly 
appreciated by the world at large close on the end of it. 
Black, again, was a Frenchman by birth, although his parents 
were British, and he was nearly related to Adam Smith and to 
Adam Ferguson. He came to Scotland when he was about twelve 
years old, and long before the institution of the Eoyal Society he 
had risen to the front rank of European chemists ; his discoveries on 
pneumatic chemistry and latent heat having laid the foundation of 
much that is valuable in subsequent investigations, and opened a 
course of inquiry pursued with great ability in our own Transac- 
tions by Leslie, and Brewster, and Forbes. He took a great interest 
