The Sun.
London, England, 1858-09-27 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 27, 1858.

WINTER KNEE BOOTS,

3TOSTeclrCeEtaryl.Sf
stHateEfltorEWß,Yr
Is
pGrlevVaEreNd
receive theto
Ten.
ders for the purchase of a number of WINTER KNEE
ROOTS, which may be inspected on application to the Fen-
cipa 1 Military Storekeeper at Weedon,. on any day up to the
4th. October (Sundays excepted) between the hours of 10
and 4. .

The party or parties 'whose_ tenders may be accepted will
have to pay for and remove the Boots within one week after
stu th acceptance.
'Parties disposed to tender must submit their offers on or
be fore the sth October, stating the number of pairs they will
ta7kQ, as. well as the price per pair ; such offers to be addressed
to "The Under Secretary of State for War, War-Office, Pall-
mall, London, S.W." and marked on the outside "Tender
for Knee Boots." - •

W or-office Pall-mH T
2Hlt h Sep te mbe rOS. OWELL, Director of Contracts
, all, , lecBsB.

•E) OARD AND RESIDENCE. A Superior
Home is offered to a Gentleman of steady habits, en-
gaged during the day, by a family residing hear Regent's-
Park. For a young man coming to London for the first time
this would be found a desirable residence. Terms moderate.
References to be exchanged. Address, J. P., Wright's
Dairy, Granby-street Hampstead-road;

rI_w_LENFIELD PATENT STARCH,
A USED IN THE ROYAL LAUNDRY,
..1413 PRONOUNCED BT,IIER MAkAwr-rs LAUNDRESS to be
_THE FINEST STARCH. SHE EVER USED.
_ Sold by all Chandlers, Grocers, &c., &c.

GEORGE HOBSON begs to call the attention
'‘..A -of Gentlemen to his New Auttm►nal Trousers, 21s. to
255. Also'his New Partridge Mixture Shooting Coats.
Excellence with Economy.
. GEORGE HOBSON, 57, Lombard-street.
Established 1796.

THE EAST INDIA TEA COMPANY, in
the absence of direct information from their own-Cor-
respondent, can only rely on that received through Russia,
and will consequently continue their extraordinarily low
quotations of 2s. per lb., for Black, Green, or Mixed Teas, in
lilb. bags ; and Coffee, in the Berry, at 11d. per lb.—Ware-
houses, 9, Great St. llelen's-churchyard, Bishopsgate-street.

credence to numerical generalisations of this sort,
because we are apt to find their authors either tak-
ing some liberties with the numbers themselves, or
demanding a wider margin of error in the applica-
tion of their principles than the precision pf the ex-
perimental data renders it possible to accord, so that
the result is more or less wanting in that close ap-
pliance to nature which makes all the difference
between a loose analogy and a physical law ; but in
this instance it certainly does appear that the
groups so arising not only do correspond remark-
ably well in their theoretical numbers with those
which the best authorities assign to their elements,
but that it really would be difficult to distinguish
the elements themselves into more distinctly cha-
racteristic classes by a consideration of their quali-
ties alone, without reference to their atomic num-
bsrs. When we find, for instance, that the prin-
ciple affords us such family groups as oxygen,
fluorine, chlorine, bromine, and iodine self-arranged
in that very order ; or again, nitrogen, phosphorus,
arsenic, antimony, and bismuth ; when we find
that it packs together in one group all the more
active and soluble electro-positive elements,
hydrogen, lithium, sodium, and potassium, and
in another the more inert and less soluble
ones. calcium, strontium, barium, and lead
and ' that, without outraging any other
system of relations, it certainly does seem that we
have here something very like a valid generalisa-
tion ; and I shall be very glad to learn in the course
of any discussions which may arise on such matters
as may be brought before us in the regular conduct
of our bmsiness, troinkthose more competent to judge
than mysell, whether I haVe been forming an over-
weenin g estimate of the value and importance of
such, generalisations. I will only add on this point,
in, reference to what fell from our excellent presi
dent in his address to the assembled association last
night, that this kind of speculation followed out
would seem to me to terminate in a point very far
from that which would regard all the members of
each of these family-groups as allotropes of one fun-
damental one, inasmuch as the common difference
of the several progressions which their atomic
weights go to make up, ars neither equal to nor in
all cases commensurate with the first terms of these
progressions. For instance, in the chlorine group
the first term being 8, the common difference is 9.
Something very different from allotropism is surely
suggested by such a relation. It would rather seem
to point to a dilution of energy of one primary ele=
ment by :the superaddition of dose after dose of
some other modifying element, and this the more-
strikingly since we find oxygen standing at the
head of very distinct groups having very striking
correspond.ences in some respects, and very striking
differences in others. But all these speculations
take for granted a principle, with which .I must
confess I think chemists have allowed themselves
to be far too easily satisfied—viz., that all the
atomic numbers are multiples of that of hydrogen.
Not until these numbers are determined with a pre-
cision approaching to that of the elements of the
planetary orbits, a precision which can leave no
possible question of a tenth or a hundredth of a per
cent., and in the presence of which such errors as
are at present regarded as tolerable in the atomic
numbers of even the best determined elements shall
be considered utterly inadmissible, I think can this
question be settled—and when such gigantic conse-
quences, so entire a system of nature is to be based
on a principle, nothing short of such evidence ought, •
I think, to be held conclusive, however seductive the
theory may appear. Ido not think such precision
unattainable, and I think I perceive a way in which
it might be attained, but one that would involve an
expenditure of time, labour, and money, such as no
private individual could bestow on it. If the phe-
nomena of chemistry are ever destined to be reduced
under the dominion of mathematical analysis, it
will no doubt be a very circuitous and intricate
route, and in which at present we see no glimpse of
light. We should therefore be all the more care-
fully on the watch in making the most of those
classes of facts which seem to place us, not indeed
within view of daylight, but at what seems • an.
opening that may possibly lead to it. Such are
those in which the agency of light is concerned in
modifying or subverting the ordinary affinities of
material elements, those to which the name of
actin o-chemistry has been affixed. Hitherto the
more attractive applications of photography have
had too much the effect of distracting the attention
from the purely chemical questions which it raises,
but the more we consider them in the abstract; the
more strongly they force themselves on our notice,
and I look forward to their occupying a much
larger space in the domain of chemical inquiry than
is the case at present. That light consists in the
undulations of an ethereal medium, or at all events
agrees better in the characters of phenomena with
such undulations; than-with any other kind of mo-
tion which it has yet been possible to imagine, is a
proposition on which I suppose the minds of physi-
cists are pretty well made up. The recent re-
searches of Professor Thomson and Mr. Joule more-
over have gone a great way towards bringing into
vogue, if not yet fully into acceptation, the doctrine
of a more or less analogous conception of heat.
When we consider now the marked influence which
the different calorific states of bodies have on their
affinities—the change of crystalline form effected
in some by a changing temperature--the allotropic
states taken on by some on exposure to heat—or the
heat given out by others on their restoration from
the allotropic to the ordinary form (for, though I
am aware that Mr. Gore considers his electro-
deposited antimony to be a compound, I cannot help
fancying that, at all events, the state in which the
antimony exists in it is an allotropic one) ; when,
I say, we consider these facts in which heat is con-
cerned, and compare them with the facts of pho-
tography, and with the ozonization of oxygen by
the chemical rays of the electric spark, and with
the striking alterations in the chemical habitudes
of bodies pointed out by Draper, Hunt, and Bec-
querel ; and when again we find these carried so
far that, as in the experiments of Bunsen and
Roscoe, we find the amount of chemical action
numerically measuring the quantity of light
absorbed, it seems hardly possible not to indulge a
hope that the pursuit of these strange phenomena
may by degrees conduct us to a mechanical theory
of chemical action itself. Even should this hope,
remain unrealised, the field itself is too wide to re-
main unexplored; and, to say nothing of discovery,
the use of photography merely as a chemical test
may prove
.very valuable, as I have myself quite
recently experienced, in the evidence it has afforded
me of the presence in certain solutions of a peculiar
metal having many of the characters of arsenic, but
differing from it in others, and strikingly contrasted
with it in its powerful photographic qualities, which
are of singular intensity, surpassing iodine, and
almost equalling bromine. There is another class
of phenomena which, though usnally considered as
belonging peculiarly to the domain of general phy-
sics, and so out of our department, seems to me to
want some attention in a chemical point of view.
It is that of capillary attraction. The co-efficient
of capillarity differs very remarkably in different
liquids, and no doubt also in their contacts with
different solids, a fact which can hardly be separated
from the idea of some community of nature between
the capillary force and those of elective attraction.
I hardly dare to hint at the existence of some slight
misgiving I have always felt as to the validity of
the received statistical theory of capillary action
which carries with it the authority of such names as
those of Laplace and Poisson. Any discussion of this
point would be matter for another section of this
association, and if I here touch upon it, it is only to
observe my impression of the requisiteness of a force
so far allied to chemical affinity as to be capable of
saturation, rests on other grounds besides that of
the mere diversity of action above alluded to. But
I must remember that you are not met here to
listen to generalities of whatever nature, but that
we have plenty of real and special business be-
fore us."

The chemical section yesterday displayed more
activity than any other, and photography, which
Sir John Herschel particularly noticed in his
address, formed the subject of several papers.
Mr. SYKES WARD, an amateur photographist of
Leeds, who has been very successful with the dry
collodion process, explained the means by which he
operates, particularly the manner of preserving the
sensitiveness of the plates ; and he exhibited some
excellent photographs taken by him in ,Dublin,
with plates prepared in Leeds. One of the objects
of Mr. Ward's experiments has been to obtain a
preparation that will be impervious to the action
of light after the image has been properly im-
pressed on the plate, so that the process may be
used for practical purposes, by unskilled persons.-
He exhibited some stereoscopic views, in which one
views had been exposed twice as long in the camera
as the other without any perceptible difference in
the effects.

Mr. R. J. FOWLER read a paper on a process for
the estimation of octinism, which, if practically
applicable, might have the effect of rendering the
length of exposure to light more determinable.

Mr. LYNDON SMITH. a photographist, who ex-
hibits niany beautiful specimens in the Leeds
Exhibition, read a paper on the adaptation of
different processes, in which he adyocated the wet

collodion process, and contended that true artistic
effects cannot be obtained by the dry process.
The most important communication, however,
was one from Mr. Mercer, who exhibited photo-
graphs in colours. The coloured photographs were
not the natural colours of objects impressed directly
on the paper, but they were produced afterwards
by a process similar to dyeing. The impressed
image acts as a mordant, and when it is dipped
into the developing fluid all the lights and shadows
are brought out in various shades of colour, accord-
ing to the menstruum used. The per-oxylate of
iron is one of the agents employed by Mr. Mercer
in his processes. umerous specimens in various
colours were exhibited and distributed among the
company. By this application of photography it
would be possible to print cotton goods from nature,
of almost any colour required.

EAST SURREY AGRICULTURAL

MEETING.

The annual ploughing match in connection with
this association took place on Thursday at Croydon,
when upwards of 40 ploughs competed for the vari-
ous prizes. In the afternoon a dinner was held in
the King's Arms Hotel. Mr. T. Byron, president
of the association, occupied the Chair, and Mr.
Alcock, M.P., and a number of the gentry and
agriculturists of the district were also present.
The usual loyal toasts having been given, Mr.
CLEASBY proposed " The health of the Archbishop
of Canterbury and the clergy of the diocese."
The Rev. E. F. BEYNON, in responding, said he
thought such associations deserved support, whether
they were regarded as educational institutions, or
merely as channels of sympathy between one class
and another. He was one of those who believed
that our education could only end with our lives,
and that when we ceased to learn we might in one
sense be said to cease to live. All agricultural
associations -were to some extent educational insti-
tutes. He did not undervalue the blessings and ad-
vantages conferred by the various schools scattered
throughout the country, but at the same time he
did not view as an unmitigated evil the early age
at which the children of the labouring classes were
taken from school. There was something to
be done beyond making these children scho-
lars. They required to be taught those things
upon which they were afterwards to employ their
talents and by which they were to gain their liveli-
hood, and, though it was highly desirable that they
should also be taught the elements of the Chris-
tian religion, and be instructed in the rudiments of
education, he did not regard as an unmitigated
evil the early age at which they left school. (Hear,
hear.) If they were made scholars only they would
ultimately prove unfitted for the station of life
which they were destined to fill. (Cheers.) He had
said that he also regarded these agricultural asso-
ciations as channels of sympathy. Great interest'
had been taken in that Atlantic cable which had
just joined two worlds together, but, however im-
portant that cable might be as a commercial artery,
it was, in his.opinion, far more important and valu-
able when considered as a sympathetic nerve beat-
ing at the bottom of the deep, and connecting the
two countries together, not merely by parchment
treaties, but by that sympathy of heart which made
us brothers in affection, as we had always been
brothers in blood, language, and interest. (Cheers.)
He regarded these agricultural societies in a similar
light. They, were the means of bringing all classes
together, whether landlords, tenants or labourers,
owners, occupiers, or wirkmen, and of enabling
them to take an interest in each other's proceed-
ings. (Cheers.) He sincerely believed that such in-
stitutions were calculated to elevate the social,
moral, and physical condition of society, and they
deserved the greatest encouragement and support,
because they advanced the interests of those sons of
toil to whom we were so much indebted for the
bright position which the country occupied; who,
by their industry and good qualities, had invested
the country with both a material and a moral great-
ness ; and who, as the golden pillars on which the
basis of society was founded, were, under Provi-
-dence,-the main source and the true secret alike of
a nation's wealth and a nation's power. (Cheers.)
Mr. MORTIMER proposed " The health of the
members for the eastern division of the county."
Mr. ALCOCK, M.P., responded. In the name of
his lion. colleague and of himself he sincerely
thanked them for the compliment they had
paid to their representatives. He deeply regretted
that his hon. colleague, Mr. Locke King, had been
prevented from attended the meeting. For about
two months Mr. Locke King had been danger:.
ously ill from a fever caught iii London while
attending to his Parliamentary duties, in conse-
quence of "the bad • state of the river Thames. He
was happy to state, however, that at this moment
his hon. friend was gradually recovering. (Cheers.)
Since the last meeting of the association peace had
been concluded with China. About a year and a-
half ago, when the subject of the war was much
discussed, strong doubts appeared to be entertained
as to the probability of the speedy termination of a
war with so vast a community at such a great dis-
tance 'from this country. It was a matter of
sincere rejoicing to find that the predictions then
made had been falsified; and that peace had been
concluded upon terms so highly favourable to this
country. (Cheers.) He thought we were fully
justified in expecting that great advantages would
arise from the resumption of our intercourse and
commerce with China. (Hear, hear.) Up to the
present moment our commercial relations with
China had been exceedingly limited in extent.
With one or two exceptions, tea was almost the
only article which we obtained from that country,
and, though the exports from the United Kingdom
to the world at large amounted to about
£115,000,000 annually, only about £1,250,000 went
to China, notwithstanding that that empire formed
more than three-eighths of the entire universe.
Hear.) He trusted, and he thought it not unlikely
with a man of the original ideas of the present
Chancellor of the Exchequer, that advantage would
be taken of the altered state of our relations with
China to reduce the duty on tea, so as to extend
our commerce, and to render an article which had
now almost become one of the necessaries of life
more accessible to the humbler classes of society.
(Hear.) At the present moment tea was more
heavily taxed than almost any other article of
general consumption. The duty was no less than
ls. 9d. a-pound, though the price of tea itself in
bond was only ls. 4d. a-pound ; and consequently a
duty of about 140 per cent. was levied, and the
result was that the consumption of tea was much
more limited than its importance as an article of
general consumption required. If the duty were
reduced to one-fourth of its present amount he be-
lieved the consumption would increase so enormously
that in a very short time the Exchequer would
lose nothing whatever by the reduction. (Hear,
hear.) As an instance of the effect which the present
high rate of taxation produced he might mention
that in the United Kingdom the annual consump-
tion of tea was about 2.-11 b. per head, while in the
colony of Victoria, in consequence of the absence of
taxation, it was 101 b. per head. (Hear.) He had
been induced to make these observations simply
because he wished to point out how much good
might result from the improved state of our rela-
tions with china. Hitherto we had regarded China
as a barbarous country, but he trusted that every,
year as our intercourse with that empire extended
such a stigma would be more and more removed.
(Hear.) There were other subjects besides the
probability:of extended commercewith China which
demanded attention at the present moment. In a
short time he hoped to see the system of turnpike-
tolls, which was now so loudly complained of, espe-
cially in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, en-
tirely done away with. In Ireland turnpike-tolls
were now got rid of, and, as the experience of that
country proved that no harm resulted from their
abolition, he saw . no reason why they should not
also be done away with in this country. (Cheers.)
But the abolition of turnpike-tolls was not the only
instance in which Ireland was beforehand with us.
Twenty-four years ago great dissatisfaction was
expressed at the church-rates in Ireland, end in a
much less number of months than the church-rate
abolitionists in this country had been fighting years
they were got rid of to the satisfaction of both
Churchmen and Dissenters. (Hear, hear.) This
question of church-rates was, in his opinion, one of
the questions which ought to be settled in some way
or other in the course of the ensuing session. His
own impression was that it should be an adjusted.
question. He had no wish to see the Church in-
jured, nor did he believe that it would sustain in-
jury if it was prepared to deal with the question in
a spirit of conciliation and concession. The time
had arrived, however, when the whole matter ought
to be settled and finally set at rest, and he believed
that before long it would be settled. (Hear, hear.)
The hon. gentleman then briefly adverted to seve-
ral topics of local interest, and concluded by ex-
pressing -his warm wishes for the increased pro-
sperity of the society.
Several other toasts having been given, the pro-
ceedings terminated