231 
ofTight? tllG n ° ti0ri ° f im P onderables from t]i 0 phenomena 
I know many men of sound science who deplore the depar- 
ture oi so many modern scientific men from the sound method 
ot induction, for the dreams of inventors of hypotheses, 
the hazy notions of Mr. Grove and kindred philosophers, on 
tne nature of force and matter, are supported more by theo- 
retical dreams than by sound deductions from facts. 
While Mr Grove speaks with contempt of mysterious fluids 
and so-called imponderables, (supported by an array of facts 
not much less numerous, and by mathematical analysis as 
rigid as that hy which the law of gravitation is proved,) he 
can regard with complacency, where facts and arguments fail 
tJie imagined perpetual-motion shower of innumerable meteors 
into the sun ; a hypothesis unsupported by a single fact or 
ooserved phenomenon of nature, but invented solely to make 
tenable those theories of force and matter which evade the 
existence of imponderables. 
If I take the most transcendental views of matter that have 
ever yet been imagined by men, I am led on the one hand to 
regard all interplanetary space, not as filled with imponderable 
uid, but by something very like a solid combination of matter : 
w ii e on the other hand, the Boscovichian theory would lead me 
to regard all this rnatter ultimately, as having no physical 
ength, breadth or thickness, but to be absolute geometrical 
points— -mere centres of force. Either of these hypotheses I 
may hold, without laying aside my claim to the rank of a 
philosophical thinker. But if I talk of a supposed Hebrew 
irmament, or believe that God made all things out of nothing, 
thought f ^ ended aS cen ^ ur ^ es behind the progress of modern 
Apologizing for having allowed my observations to run 
to such a length, I now call on Professor Young to read 
ms paper. ° 
The following paper was then read : — 
ON THE LANGUAGE OF GESTICULATION ; AND ON 
THE ORIGIN, OF SPEECH. By J. R. Young, Esq., 
late Professor of Mathematics, Belfast College. 
T AM about to invite your attention this evening to a sub- 
ject which has, I think, received as yet too little notice 
trom philologica 1 speculators in their inquiries into the orio-in 
oi articulate language. 
Much learned and successful research has been devoted to 
