Ordinary Meeting, March 20th, 1860. 
Wm. Fairbairn, Esq., F.R.S., &c.. President, in the Chair. 
The President exhibited two large pans of cast iron, pro- 
cured by Mr. Worthington from China, where they are used 
for boiling rice. The metal, which was at the strongest part 
only one-tenth of an inch in thickness, possessed considerable 
malleability. The President remarked that the art of 
making such large castings of thin metal was unknown 
in England. 
Some conversation took place respecting the proposed 
Telegraph to connect Great Britain with America, by using 
Iceland, Greenland, and Labrador as intermediate stations. 
Mr. F. Gisborne, the original projector of the Atlantic 
Telegraph, said that the fears which had been expressed that 
the cable would be destroyed on the coast of Labrador by 
grounded icebergs, were not warranted. He was intimately 
acquainted with the locality, and although there was an im- 
mense number of icebergs which grounded on the coast, 
some, as he had himself observed, in seventy fathoms water, 
yet, as at Newfoundland, there were inlets with water in the 
middle of sufficient depth to secure the cable from injury. 
A Paper was read by John Graham, Esq., entitled “ On 
the History of Invention as applied to the Dyeing and 
Printing of Fabrics. Part 2nd, Mechanics.” 
The Author gave a full account of inventions in printing 
from the earliest period, of which the following is a brief 
abstract. The first mention of the application of machinery 
for the purpose of printing is contained in a grant of patent 
rights to Arnold Rotespan, in the year 1634, for “a certain 
pressinge or printinge engine with wheels and rolls, after his 
peculiar manner.” The next great step in advance was the 
introduction of a printing machine by William Keen and 
Proceedings— Lit. & Phil. Society — No. 12.— Session, 1859-60. 
