The Sun.
London, England, 1858-09-30 00:00:00

THE CONCLUDING MEETING.

The concluding general meeting was held in the
large room of the Town-hall at 3 o'clock this (Wed-
nesday) afternoon. There was a numerous attend-
ance of ladies and gentlemen. Professor Owen, the
President of the Association, presided, and on the
platform also were many of the distinguished men
who have taken part in the various gatherings
which have been held under tho society's auspices
during the last few days.
Professor OWEN commenced the proceedings, by
calling upon
Major-General SABINE, who stated the various
steps which had been taken by the Executive Com-
mittee for securing and advancing the interests of
science during the next 12 months. They were
dividedinto two heads—first, resolutions which re-
quired no grants of money to carry them out ; and
second, those which did require grants of money.
Under the first head it had been decided, among
other things, that application should be made to the
Sardinian Government for obtaining additional fa-
cilities for scientific men to pursue their researches
on the summit of the Alps ; to appoint a committee
to take steps for improving the patent system of this
country, and securing a better reward to meritori-
ous inventors; and to appoint a committee to com-
municate with the Board of Trade for making
oceanic observations ; to take steps for making
magnetic and other observations in various parts of
the world ; to request the attention of the Lords of
the Admiralty to the importance of authorising
further research on the depth, temperature, ize:, of
the sea, with especial reference to communications
with distant shores by means of submarine tele-
graphs; and to endeavour to obtain greater facili-
ties
ties for promoting geographical investigations.
Those resolutions which had grants of money at-
tached to them included the following, the aggre-
gate amount granted being £1,265 :—XSO to endea-
vour to obtain an act of Parliament to appoint new
trustees of the property of scientific institutions ;
£5OO for maintaining the establishment of theKdw
Observatoryr and £2OO to Prof. Wilson, of the
Melbourne U aiversity, in aid of his proposed scheme

for establishing a reflecting telescope for observa-
tion of the southern nebulae, on the understanding
that the local Government defray the remaining
cost. The other grants consisted of various smaller
sums for the purpose of enabling different scientific
men to make researches in furtherance of the re-
spective branches of science to which they have
devoted themselves, and to continue the system
of dredging the coast to obtain specimens of various
marine animals which has been for some years pur-
sued by'several gentlemen under the auspices of the
Association.

The following is a complete list of the grants :
Parliamentary committee—museum trust property,
£5O; Kew Observatory, £500; Prof. Wilson—tele-
scope at Melbourne, £200; Col. Sykes—balloon
ascents, £2OO ; Voelcker—manure experiments, £25
Maskelyne--phocographie chymistry, £10; Sulli-
van—solubility of salts, £3O ; Gages--chymical
analysis of minerals, £10; Mr. Hopkins—expansion
and contraction of rocks, £5O; R. Mallett—earth-
quake experiments, £25; Murchison—Lancashire
fossils, £2O; Dr. Wright—marine fauna, £10; Dr.
Green—medusidw, £5; Dr. Wright—tunicata, £5 ;
R. Patterson—dredging, north of Ireland, £2O; Dr.
Daubeny—growth .of plants, £10; T. Allis—oste-
ology of birds, £5O; R. M'Andrew—dredging com-
mittee, £5; Dr. Kinahan—dredging in Dublin-.
bay, £l5; J. Thomson—discharge of water, £lO '
Wm. Fairbairn—committee on steamvessels, £l5.

Professor PHILLIPS stated that the sum of money
which had been received by. the Association during
the present meeting was altogether £1,929. (Ap-
plause.) The number of old life members who had
been present at the Leeds meeting was 222 ; new
life members, 43 ; old annual subscribers, 111;
new annual subscribers, 90 ; associates, 706; ladies,
508 ; foreigners, 13 ; making the total number of
members composing the Leeds meeting 1,693. (Ap-
plause.) This meetmg, the learned professor added,
had produced only £7B less than was received at
the meeting of the Association in Dublin last year.
(Applause.)
Lord MONTEAGLE then rose and proposed a vote
of thanks to the president and executive officers of
the British Association for having selected Leeds as
their place of meeting this year, and for the excel-
lent manner in which the business of the Associa-
tion had been conducted. (Applause.) He spoke of
the meeting as having been a very successful one,
and regarded it, in relation to Leeds and the West
Riding, as a union between science in the abstract
and science applied and brought to practical re-
sults. (Applause.) One great peculiarity of the
meeting, he said, had been the practical nature of
the subjects discussed, and the large proportion of
Ipcal contributions. (Hear, hear.)
The resolution was carried with acclamation, and
Professer OWEN responded to it. He expressed.
in his own name, and on behalf of the British As-
sociation, their sense of gratitude for the reception
which they had met with, and for the arrangements
of every kind which had been effected for the effi-
cient performance of their duties and for their com-
fort. (Applause.) He said that entire unanimity
had prevailed among the various public bodies of
the borough, and in thanking, in the first place, the
Mayor and Corporation, he remarked that the mag-
nificent Town-hall had been placed at their entire
disposal, and it had afforded ample convenience for
the business of the Association. (Applause.) The
learned professor thanked seriatim various persons
and public bodies who had contributed to ren-
der the arrangements for the Association com-
plete, and in the course of his observations he
alluded particularly to the pleasure which the mem-
bers of the society had derived from inspecting the
Leeds Local Exhibition of Industry. (Applause.)
He added that the Association would leave Leeds
with a much higher and more expanded sense of
the industry and importance of the town. (Ap-
plause.) In thanking those gentlemen who had
entertained the visitors, the learned professor said
he could not refrain from referring to the munificent
hospitality of one gentleman, Mr. G. S. Beecroft,
one of the members for the borough, who had
opened his arms, so to speak, to the whole of the
members of the Association. (Applause.)
The meeting of the Association will be held next
year in Aberdeen.

THE NEW BRIDGE AT WESTMINSTEI

The unsightliness of " Old" Westminster Bridge
makes everyone anxious for the moment when its
young and graceful successor shall strip itself of its
present mysterious hoarding, and at last unfold its
beauty and utility to the public gaze and occupa-
tion. For years past we have been accustomed to
submit to a horrible disfigurement of the great
western water thoroughfare which, while stripped
of its old•fashioned quaintness and associations, has
never during its numerous transformations as yet
realised our modern notions of the fitness of things.
We have lost the row of covered recesses on each
flag-way which were wont to be such com-
forts to the way-worn traveller, and of which, an-
tiquarians, afflicted with a love of the marvellous,
used to' tell us Esuch wonderful stories of murders
that had been discovered by means of the echoes of
the bridge. The crown, 6,0 pleasant to look at, and
so picturesque to every one but omnibus horses and
obese pedestrians, has been gradually shaven down
to the very verge of safety, and the balustrades,
through which strangers peeped at the finest river
views in Europe, have been superseded by a
wooden partition, which permits nothing to be seen
but its own dull, impervious monotony. The
traveller on the "silent highway" has had his eye
offended by closed and bungled up arches decorated
with warning whisps of hay ; and, altogether
this great metropolitan structure has looked
more like an Irish castle rank-rent than a great
arterial communication in the greatest city in the
world. Meanwhile, the traffic, north and south, had
daily and hourly increased, until, at last, a daily
average of thirty thousand vehicles of one sort or
another has been ascertained to pass over the crazy
waterway. Poor M. Labeylle, the Swiss engineer
who, some century or so ago, was employed bythe
Board of Works of the day to construct Westmin-
ster Bridge, had little notion of the future work
which his edifice would have to do, or he cer-
tainly would not have submitted so easily to the
autho'rities, who in all ages have been the
sworn, foes of architects and engineers. M.
Labeylle laid his foundations simply for a wooden
superstructure, but even for that his arrangements
were insufficient, and wonld be laughed at by the
merest tyro in engineering of the present day. The
worthy Helvetian made his wooden caissons where
he listed, and having duly filled them with stones,
he had them towed to the station wherein they
were finally to rest. Having got them there he
commenced digging a founation for them with
great pertinacity, never remembering that as fast as
he made a hole at the ebb tide, the water filled it
again at the flow, until at last, tired of the bootless
work, he dropped his caissons on the gravel, and com-
menced raising his piers without further preparation.
He had designed a wooden structure, but the powers
that were decided that it should be stone, and ac-
cordingly stone it was made ; so that between the
unskilfulness of the engineer and the ignorant
mulishness of the authorities, a bridge was made in
the eighteenth century which became crumbling
and dangerous in less than one hundred, years ;
whereas old London Bridge, which had been built
by Peter of Colechurch some eight hundred years
before, showed a tenacity which almost defied the
pickaxes of the artisans of the present structure.
When that bridge was completed, and free passage
was given to the immense volume of water which
previously had had to squeeze itself in a sort of
cascade through the numerous arches of the old
bridge, the doom of Westminster Bridge was
sealed. The " scour" began immediately to under-
mine its unskilfully-placed caissons, and that
" settling down " commenced which, during living
memory, has been the constant cause of trouble and
anxiety to successive Boards of Works.
The erection of the new Houses of Parliament
brought matters to a crisis. Sir Charles Barry
could not bear to see his beautiful Gothic tracery
stand side by side with a crazy tottering agglome-
ration of wooden hoardings, clumsy looking piles,
debilitated arches, some blind,f some with one eye
out, some labelled dangerous with the significant
bundle of straw, and with a roadway shaven so
close to the crown as to threaten a shower of omni-
buses or some similar calamity into the river
at any given moment. Mr. Page, the eminent go-
vernment engineer, was accordingly set to work, and
in due time a design Was produced at once bold,
original, and beautiful, and which would satisfy
the artist's desideratum of harmonising with the
new Palace, and at the same time fulfil the more
utilitarian end of accommodating the enormously
increased traffic of the river. A perfectly novel and
courageous conception respecting the new bridge
was, that it should be actually constructed on the
site of the old one while the others still remained
open for traffic ; and at this moment piers are being
completed and ribs are being thrown across, while
the human tide rolls incessantly over head; and
the great intercommunication of north and south
London goes on without interruption on a platform
so to speak, under which the piledriver, the black-
smith, and the mason are working incessantly
night and day. The works of the new bridge were
commenced m 1833 by Messrs. Mare, of Black-
wall, from the designs of Mr. Page, and continued
for two years in the hands of that firm, until its
bankruptcy brought everything to a standstill, and
two valuable years were subsequently lost in a red-
tape interregnum. Mr. Page then took the work in
hand himself, and with the powerful aid of Mr.
Harris, his chief superintendent, got more work
aiine-duringthe last year than would have been done
in six at the rate maintained by the original•con-
tractors. At this moment the abutments of both

sides of the river are complete, and four of the
six piers in the bed of the river are also in readi-
ness to receive their iron superstructure. Un-
like M. Labeylle, Messrs. Page and Harris have
prepared sure and solid foundations. Immense
piles, shod with iron, have been driven down deep
into the London clay, which forms the lower bed of
the river ; these again have been cased in solid iron,
and. the inclosed space and interstices. have been
filled with concrete, on which rest the immense
solid granite blocks which form the stone founda-
tions of the piers. • The- masonry is carried., to a foot
and a half above the Trinity high-water mark, and
from. thence will spring the graceful iron ellipses
which • are to form the arches of the bridge.. In
obedience to the condition of construction, which
requiredthat the old bridge should not be disturbed
until the new one was ready for traffic, a longitu-
dinal section, with a breadth of exactly one-half the
final literal dimensions of the bridge, is now com-
plete, both in piers and abutments. The iron arches
are in course of construction up at Battersea, and it
is expected that in March next cabs, " busses,"
waggons, and bipeds, will be rolling and running
over the finished half of new Westminster-bridge.
To much credit cannot be given to the engineers
for this bold and original mode of construction, which
reduces to solid reality Swift's caricature of begin-
ning to build houses at the chimney-tops, while it
realises an immense saving in avoiding the expense
of a new site, and allows the enormous traffic of the
river to go on without the interruption of a single
day.
The near approach of the time when the bridge
will be partially thrown open to traffic will of course
heighten the curiosity of the public respecting its
details and the accommodation they may expect
from the completed structure. We shall inform
them, then, that the new bridge, of a graceful Gothic
design, with seven elliptical arches, each flattened
at the crown so as to allow a clear view of Sir
Charles Barry's masterpiece, will start on the Surrey
side from Stangate, sweeping away in its course the
block of houses that stands on the western side of
Westminster-road between Stangate and the river.
Ascending by a gentle gradient of 1 in 54 to the
centre, where its extreme altitude will be nearly
ten feet less than that of the old bridge, it will
cross the river with an extreme length of 1,206 feet
being just 108 feet less than the length of Waterloo-
bridge. On the Middlesex side it will sweep the
western side of Bridge-street, leaving Palace-yard
entirely open, and thus an urban picture will
be obtained of striking effect and palatial magni-
ficence. It will have a breadth of 84 feet 3 inches,
being as nearly as possible double that of the old
bridge, with a flagway of 10 feet on each side ; and
it is needless to point •out-what advantage this in-
creased space, combinedwith the comparatively low
elevation of the roadway, will confer on the western
traffic of the metropolis. Sightseekers may then
stand on the bridge, and, leaning over the tasteful
balustrade with its trefoil decorations, decide for
themselves whether Sir Charles Barry's work is
a failure, or the great architectural triumph of
the country. One thing they will be sure of,
and that is that that architect has taken good care
of the Speaker and the great officers of the
honourable house ; and they will probably be
surprised to find that for the former space has
been found for a garden of about a quarter of an
acre in a part of London where ground is worth at
least a thousand pounds a foot. But we shall have
to wait about two years for the completed structure,
and in the meantime must avail ourselves with
thankfulness of the facilities for riverine transit
which the ingenuity of Mr. Page and the skill and
energy of Mr. Harris and his subordinates in the
work will have provided for us,
There is one more fact respecting this great
metropolitan structure which must not remain un-
recorded. The original estimate was £240,000,
and it is now confidently expected that that sum
will amply cover all expenses. 0, si sic omnia !
Daily News.

ROYAL COMMISSION ON THE ARMY
CLOTHING SYSTEM.

WEEDON, WEDNESDAY EVENING.

The Commissioners appointed to inquire into the
management of the three great military depots at
Weedon, Woolwich, and the Tower, assembled here
to-day again in the building known by the name
of the Pavilion, in close contiguity to the clothing
store, and resumed the investigation. Mr. Selfe
presiding as chairman. They devoted nearly three
hours in the early part of the morning in (completing
the inspection of the internal economy of the depot
which they began on the preceding day, and in
which they were again accompanied by Captain
Gordon, the chief superintendent, and Mr.' Drew,
their chief secretary. This occupied them until
about half-past 2 o'clock, and then they yroceeded
to the examination of witnesses. The inspection
to-day was more especially directed to the state of
the boot and saddlery departments and to the mode
of inspection adopted there. The result was to
sonic extent brought out in the evidence taken at
a subsequent part of the day. There were a few of
the employes of the establishment present at the
inquiry during the afternnon, and the rustic popu-
lation of the town of Weedon was adequately
represented.
Commissary-General Adams was called at the
request of the CHAIRMAN, and stated that he and a
staff of eight assistants were and had been for some
time engaged in making up the arrears in the
ledger of Mr. Elliott from the Ist of April, 1857, to
the 14th of May, 1858, at the instance of the War-
office, a work of infinite labour as shown by the
following report which he read to the Commis-
sioners :

" On the 9th of June last eight commissariat officers who
were residing on half-pay in different parts of England,
Scotland, Ireland, and the Channel Islands, were ordered

to repair to Weedon to assist in completing certain accounts.
" On the 10th of June I was informed that, it being con-
sidered of much public inportance that these accounts
should be completed as soon as possible, it was deemed de-
sirable that the labours of these officers should be superin-
tended by a superior officer of their own department, and I
was directed by the Secretary of State for War to proceed
to Weedon for that purpose. On the 13th of June, having
visited Weedon, I suggested that the examination of the
accounts which had been recently rendered to the War-
office up to the 31st of March, 1857, should be completed at
the earliest possible period, in: order that the state' or remains
in store on that date might be checked and verified. I also
submitted that regiments and corps should be applied to for
returns of all clothing, and other stores received from or
returned to the depot ; that I should be furnished with
statements to be prepared from, or that I might have refer-.
ence to the cash accounts, to ascertain that all purchases
and sales had teen duly accounted for ; and that it might
be necessity to call for rebut s of all transactions with other
depots. I stated that the number of vouchers to be posted
was supposed to, exceed 20,000. On the 2d of July, I was
requested to prepare draughts of a circular and of the re-
turns to be required from regiments or corps, which I sub-
mitted for approval on the following day. This circular
was issued on the 10th of August, and many of the regi-
ments at home have, I understand, furnished the returns.
" The postings in the ledgers have been much interrupted
and retarded •by vouchers having been delivered in and
withdrawn in great numbers almost daily for the settlement
of large arrears due to contractors and for other purposes,
and that regularity in their order has been, disturbed which
it would have been very desirable to observe, with the view
of more readily checking or accounting for the large issues
of clothing to contractors for alteration • of cloth and mate-
rials delivered to contractors to be made into clothing; of
consignments to the army packers, Messrs. Hayter and
Howell, at Mark-lane, to be repacked and forwarded to re-
giments ' • of issues to and receipts from other depots; and
of issues to the Admiralty, the East India Company, or
otherservices the value of which would be recoverable.

" Notes have been kept in posting the vouchers of such as
appear to be incomplete or objectionable—such as bear the
signatures of the viewers only, or are otherwise defective,
according to the regulations of usual practice of the service.
" A check has also been kept of the registry numbers in
the contract account ledger, in order that when all the re-
ceipt vouchers have been handed over any that have not
been marked off and appear to be missing may, if possible,
be traced and brought to account.

" There are seven ledgers in course of preparation for the
period from the Ist of April, 1857, to the 14th of May, 18.58,
viz. :—Cloth and warm clothing for the army generally;
busbies, chacos, cloaks, coats, jackets, overalls, and clothing
various ; boots and shoes, brushes, and forage caps ; buttons,
badges, and garniture • necessaries, accoutrements, and
packages ; saddlery ; tunics and trousers, made up and in
material, 8,416 vouchers of receipts and 10,361 of issues
have been in some, or are in course of being posted in other
of these ledgers ; and there are 429 vouchers of receipts and
27 of issues, which have been from time to time delivered
over, but could not be entered in their proper order, and
will, with about 1,500 more, which are retained by the mill-
, tary store department for the purpose of settlement of large
arrears due to contractors, remain to be arranged and added
hereafter to the present or some supplementary ledger.
"It is proposed to send to the War-office the several
ledgers, as far as they can be completed, with the postings
of the vouchers already in course of entry, in order that
their examination may be proceeded with, and that the
vouchers which could not be entered in their proper place
or order, with those retained for settlement with contractors,
should, when these are all handed over, be made additional
entries at the end of the present ledger, or be completed in
supplementary ledgers.
" When all the
.postings have been completed, and the
' state' or remains in stores on the 31st March, 1857, certi-
fied by the examiner, of the accounts already rendered, has
been furnished, an account can be prepared showing the
remains of the stores which should have been transferred
by Mr. Elliott,- and a comparison can then be made with
the remains ascertained and brought to account by Captain
Gordon on or about the 14th of May, 1588.
" It must, however, be observed that even the account
thus prepared cannot be deemed a satisfactory public
account until it has been thoroughly ascertained, in the
course of its examination at the War-office, that all purchases,
sales, and all transactions with contractors, the army
packers at Mark-lane, and with other depots have been
duly and properly accounted for. It should also be borne
in mind that the present ledgers have been compiled from
a mass of documents handed over, a large number of which
are defective and objectionable as vouchers, from time to
time, without any arrangement whatever, and there is no
guarantee that they represent all the transactions of the
depot.—Weedon, Sept. 29, 1858."
He added that he was conducting the work of ex-
amination with as much expedition as possible.
There were at present 10,000 pairs of boots un-
accounted for in the ledger. •
By Mr. Turn.-_.r.—He could not see that there