bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
3. On the Coloration of the Blood
Authors: Ellis Daniel
Published: June 2016

In the first part of the paper, the author states that he still maintains the opinion expressed in his published work on respiration, viz., that the quantity of carbonic acid formed in respiration is exactly equal to that of the oxygen consumed; and he enters into a detailed critical analysis of the different experiments recorded by authors on this subject, placing, however, his chief reliance upon those of Berthollet, and of Allen and Pepys, in order to justify his opinion. He also holds the view that the exhalation of carbonic acid and consumption of oxygen are not independent processes, but are the immediate result of the direct union of carbonic and oxygen within the air-cells of the lungs, and he expresses doubts as to the accuracy of the experiments of Edwards, which have by many been held to establish the opposite view.
2. Papers on Glaciers. No. 1, Account of a Geometrical Survey of the Mer de Glace of Chamouni
Authors: Forbes
Published: June 2016

This paper does not admit of abridgment. The author gave an account of a survey which he executed of the whole extent of the principal glacier of Mont Blanc and its tributaries. A base line of nearly 3000 feet was carefully measured in the valley, and extended by means of a very careful triangulation to a point on the glacier distant 28,600 feet, and elevated 4400 above the base line.
Papers on Glaciers. No. 2, describing the Rate of Motion of the Ice of the Mer de Glace, deduced from observation
Authors: Forbes
Published: June 2016

The author detailed in this paper the methods of observation by which he was enabled to ascertain the daily and even hourly motion of different parts of the glacier.

The following are some of the principal results:—

I. In the particular case of the Mer de Glace, the motion of the higher parts of the glacier are on the whole slower than those of its lower portion, but the motion of the middle region is slower than either.
2. On the Structure of the Lymphatic Glands
Authors: Goodsir John
Published: June 2016

The author stated that the different lymphatics, as they enter the gland, become deprived of their external tunic, which passes on to the surface of the organ, to assist in forming its capsule. The middle tunic also becomes weaker, and presents the appearance of fibres arranged in the form of arches, which enclose rounded or oval spaces, particularly towards the surface of the gland, and at the angles formed by the anastomosis of one lymphatic with another.
3. On the Determination of Heights by the Temperature of Boiling Water
Authors: Forbes
Published: June 2016

The investigations in this paper were made in order to reduce certain observations on the boiling point of water, made by the author in the Alps, in 1842.

He considered that it has been too generally assumed that the boiling point corresponds to a barometric pressure which expresses the elasticity of steam taken from the usual tables. He, therefore, attempted to deduce the connection of these data by a direct comparison of cases, in which both the barometer and boiling point were noticed by himself. He finds this result, that the pressures increase rigorously in a geometrical ratio, whilst the temperature of the boiling point rises uniformly.
1. Observations on the Temperature and Hygrometric state of the Island of Barbadoes
Authors: Lawson R.
Published: June 2016

This paper contains an account of the Thermometric and Hygrometric observations made at the Barbadoes, from May 1841 to January 1842. The instruments were carefully verified and observed; and, during three months, the temperature was ascertained for 18 hours out of the 24. The author thence deduces the form of the daily curve of temperature for that period.
2. On certain Negative Actions of Light
Authors: Kœnigsberg Moser
Published: June 2016

“There are certain actions of light which may be called negative actions. By this name I mean to indicate a series of new actions, without pretending to enter into any theoretical considerations. In acting upon an iodised plate, common light produces successively different states, which are made manifest by exposing the plate, when taken out of the camera, to the vapours of mercury. If the plate has remained in the camera but a short time, we shall see only the first traces of an image. The parts most strongly affected by the light condense the mercurial vapour only in small quantities. If the light acts during a longer time, the image will appear with more details and more distinctly, the mercurial vapours being condensed more abundantly. By increasing the time of action, the image gains in details, but the parts which have been affected with a strong light condense the mercurial vapours in smaller quantities.
1. On the presence of Organic Matter in the purest Waters from Terrestrial Sources
Authors: Connell
Published: June 2016

It must be well known to chemists, that when solution of acetate of lead is added to the transparent and colourless water of springs, wells, and rivers, a more or less dense white cloud is almost invariably produced. This reaction has been usually attributed to the presence of inorganic salts, such as carbonates, sulphates, and muriates; but it will be found that, generally speaking, this precipitate is formed even after the water has been boiled; that it is usually dissolved by the speedy addition of a drop or two either of acetic or of nitric acid, without visible effervescence; and that the agency of the water with nitrate of silver is commonly too small to admit of its being caused by any muriate.
On the Influence of various Circumstances in Vegetation upon the activity of Plants. Part. II. The Umbelliferous Narcotics
Authors: Christison
Published: June 2016

In the First Part of this inquiry, the author gave an account, in 1840, of some observations made by him, as to the influence of season on the activity of the acrid plants of the natural family Ranunculaceœ, and of the narcotics belonging to the family Drupaceœ. In the Second Part now laid before the Society, he proceeded to relate a series of experiments instituted by him with the view of determining the influence of season on the activity of the poisonous narcotic plants of the family Umbelliferœ.
1. On the Existence of an Osseous Structure in the Vertebral Column of Cartilaginous Fishes
Authors: Stark James
Published: June 2016

The author, after quoting from the works of writers on Ichthyology and Comparative Anatomy their descriptions of the vertebral columns of cartilaginous fishes, proceeded to point out the existence of an osseous structure in the vertebræ of the Plagiastomi, or Rays and Sharks. In thse animals the essential portion of each vertebra consists of a double cup or saucer-shaped osseous piece, resembling in form and structure the double cup-shaped vertebræ of osseous fishes, being, like them, composed of concentric rings of osseous matter.
3. Notice regarding The Indian Grass Oil, or Oil of Andropogon Calamus-aromaticus
Authors: Tilley Thomas G.
Published: June 2016

The oil known as Indian Grass Oil, has been referred by Dr Royle to the Andropogon Calamus-aromaticus, a plant which he conceives to be identical with the Καλαμος αζωματιχος of the Greeks. It has been used in medicine as a stimulant embrocation in rheumatism, &c.

The oil, which was green, became yellow when heated. It acquired a steady boiling point at 440°, between which temperature and 442°, a transparent colourless oil distil over.
1. Biographical Account of Professor Louis Albert Necker, of Geneva, Honorary Member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
Authors: Forbes David James
Published: June 2016

Louis Albert Necker, who died at Portree, in Skye, on the 20th November 1861, aged 76, had been for many years a Foreign Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

His relation to the Royal Society, and to Scotland generally, was, however, far different from what belongs to most honorary members. As a youth, his studies had been pursued at the Edinburgh University. He had received almost his first introductions to society amongst the very best circles which the Scottish capital, in the days of perhaps its highest literary and scientific celebrity, could afford; he visited the Highlands, and even the remoter Hebrides, with an admiring enthusiasm which few native tourists have surpassed. In later life he returned with renewed interest to revisit the scenes where he spent his youth.
2. History of Popular Literature, and its Influence on Society
Authors: Chambers Wm.
Published: June 2016

Having introduced the subject, Mr Chambers referred to the earliest examples of popular literature in the reign of Elizabeth; they were embelished with wood engravings, believed to be executed in Germany. Such was the origin of those very curious tracts known as “chap books,” now very rare, and much prized by bibliographic amateurs. The subjects of these books resembled the Folk-Lore of the Germans, and were the embodiment of the superstitions, fancies, and traditions of a much earlier period; the least exceptionable being the ballads of a heroic and tender kind.
2. Concluding Note on the Star Observations at Elchies
Authors: Smyth C. Piazzi
Published: June 2016

In the former paper, read in December 1862, the author had detailed the points of interest that had been found in discussing the angles of position, distances, and magnitudes of certain double stars which he observed at Elchies with Mr Grant's fine telescope in last September; and he now treated similarly the observations of the colours of the stars then and there observed. The chief point to notice being, that in certain cases the colours undergo periodical variations; with the star “95 Herculis” in twelve years, almost exactly within the tenth part of a year, if older records can be trusted to implicitly; and such periodical change the author considered a new feature in this branch of astronomy, and one of a most important and hopeful character for observers to follow up in future.
6. Note on a Quaternion Transformation
Authors: Tait
Published: June 2016

The following paper gives an idea of the nature of the physical applications of quaternions to which I referred in a previous note (Proceedings, April 1862), but which other avocations have, as yet, prevented me from developing into a form and bulk suitable for publication in the Society's Transactions. The equations I now give form the basis of the investigations in question, which I hope to present to the Society in detail on some future occasion.
1. On the Conservation of Energy
Authors: Tait
Published: June 2016

What Matter or Force may be, we have not as yet the slightest idea. Matter is only known to us by the forces it exerts or resists. It is possible that there may be but one species of ultimate parts (molecules or atoms?) of matter; but in the present state of chemical science, it is more philosophical to reason as if the ultimate parts of the various elementary bodies are distinct. However this may be, a particle of hydrogen, oxygen, sodium, or gold, exerts certain definite forces upon other particles; which forces, we have every reason to believe, will remain for ever unchanged, unless the so-called element should at some future time be decomposed.
3. On the Occurrence of Amœbiform Protoplasm and the Emission of Pseudopodia in the Hydroida
Authors: Allman
Published: June 2016

The author described the contents of the small tubular appendages, named Nematophores by Busk, which are developed upon certain definite points of the hydrosome in the Plumularidœ. These contents were shown to consist of a granular protoplasm, with occasionally a cluster of large thread-cells embedded in it.

The protoplasm has the property of emitting pseudopodia, which are very extensile and mutable in shape, and exactly resemble the pseudopodial prolongations, whose occurrence among the Rhizopoda is so eminently characteristic of this group of Protozoa. The contents of the nematophores, indeed, except alone in the presence of thread-cells, are indistinguishable in structure, and in the phenomena presented by them from the sarcode or protoplasm, which forms the substance of an amœba, a difflugia, or an arcella.
4. Notice of a Simple Method of Approximating to the Roots of any Algebraic Equation
Authors: Sang Edward
Published: June 2016

M. Lagrange, on applying the method of continued fractions to the resolution of numerical equations, discovered that, for those of the second degree, the quotients recur periodically. From this, combined with the previously well known fact that all periodic chain fractions belong to quadratics, he inferred that periodicity is exclusively confined to equations of this order.

In January 1858, I showed to the Royal Society that the series of approximating fractions obtained by M. Lagrange can be continued in the opposite direction, and that the convergence then is to the other root; and enunciated the general theorem, that if any two fractions be assumed, and if a progression be formed from them by combining fixed multiples of their members, this progression, which I called duserr or two-headed, may be continued in either way, and gives on the one hand the one, on the other hand the other root of a quadratic.
1. On the Influence of the Refracting Force of Calcareous Spar on the Polarization, the Intensity, and the Colour of the Light which it Reflects
Authors: Brewster David
Published: June 2016

In the “Philosophical Transactions” for 1819, the author had shown that the doubly refracting force of calcareous spar extended beyond the sphere of the reflecting force, producing a change in the polarising angle varying with the inclination of the incident ray to the axis of the crystal, and producing a deviation of the plane of polarisation from the plane of incidence and reflexion, when the reflecting force of the crystal was reduced by contact with oil of cassia and other oils. These experiments were made on the face of the primitive rhomb.
3.—On the Action of Terchloride of Phosphorus on Aniline
Authors: Tait Magnus M.
Published: June 2016

More than a year since my attention was directed to a statement of Hofmann's, that the action of terchloride of phosphorus on aniline yielded a white substance of crystalline character, as the investigation of this compound so produced seemed likely to be of interest, I began its examination, but circumstances prevented me from completing it at that time. The publication of Schiff's papers, however, on the metal-anilides again drew my notice to the subject, and I considered it a duty to myself to publish the results of my experiments, more especially as the reaction which forms the subject of this paper appears to have escaped the attention of that chemist.
Notice of a curious Binocular Telescope
Authors: Archer
Published: June 2016

The eye-pieces and object-glasses, each in a separate tube, worked in a case 15½ inches in length by 5 inches in breadth, and 2 in depth, forming, with the bevelled corners, a flat octagon, covered with a species of shagreen, and mounted in silver. An exceedingly simple and ingenious arrangement, consisting of a double screw working four small arms of brass, was placed at each end for the purpose of regulating the distances between each pair of glasses, and silver dial plates enabled the operator to set the instrument according to his ascertained requirements. The instrument belongs to the Royal Institution of Liverpool, and is supposed tc have been part of a collection of rarities, made by Wm. Roscoe, in Italy. As a telescope, it is of great power; the focus is adjusted by one portion of the case acting as a draw-tube within the other part.
1. On the Gods of the Rigveda
Authors: Muir John
Published: June 2016

After some preliminary remarks on the common origin of the Indians, Greeks, and Romans,—on the expectation thereby raised that we should find in the earliest literatures of these nations some remains of the primeval mythology which their ancestors must originally have possessed in common,—on the partial fulfilment of this expectation by an examination of these literatures,—and on the greater light thrown by the Rigveda than by any other monument of ancient poetry on the genesis of mythology,—the author adverts to the various theories of creation which would naturally be formed by simple men in the earlier ages of the world, to the manner in which the various great phenomena of nature would come to be ascribed to different deities, and to the diverse aspects in which the grander objects of creation, such as heaven and earth, were viewed, sometimes as inanimate, sometimes as animated and divine.
3. An Essay on the Theory of Commensurables
Authors: Sang Edward
Published: June 2016

The subject of this essay may be described as an application of the Theory of Number to Geometry, its principal or characteristic problem being to determine under what conditions the sides or surfaces of figures may be represented by integer numbers.

Like all other inquiries into the properties of integers, it is rather speculative than practical, and yet, perhaps on that very account, is more apt to engross the attention of its cultivators than almost any other department of pure mathematics. It seems, indeed to be of very little moment whether we can demonstrate that the sum of two cubes never can be a cube; and yet one after another of the most eminent mathematicians have tried, and, though foiled, have again and again essayed the proof of Fermat's negation.
1. On Vital Agency with reference to the Correlation of Forces
Authors: Seller William
Published: June 2016

In this paper there is presented a series of characteristic examples of vital agency, followed by some considerations bearing on the extent to which, in a physiological point of view, it can be admitted that the physical forces, under exchangeable forms, are concerned in organic phenomena. At the same time, one of the particular objects of inquiry is, whether there be ground for the belief that vital agency, being not a force but a directive principle, may accomplish all the parts assigned to it, solely by means of the physical forces variously modified through organic structure.
2. On Sun Spots, and their connection with Planetary Configurations
Authors: Stewart Balfour
Published: June 2016

The author was led to examine the sun pictures taken by the Kew Photoheliograph, with the view of ascertaining if any connection exists between the behaviour of sun spots and planetary configurations.

It was found, that when any portion of the sun's disc recedes by virtue of rotation from the neighbourhood of Venus, it acquires a tendency to break out into spots, and, on the other hand, when such approaches Venus, there is a tendency towards the healing up of spots. Carrington's observations were then discussed, which seem to show that, on the whole, the sun's surface is fullest of spots when Jupiter is furthest from our luminary, and freest from spots when he is nearest.
3. On the Freezing of the Egg of the Common Fowl
Authors: Davy John
Published: June 2016

The author, preparatory to stating the experiments which he has made on the freezing of the egg of the common fowl, referred to the early ones of Mr Hunter on the same subject, and to the later ones of Mr Paget, both these inquirers agreeing as to the results, but differing in their conclusions, Hunter attributing the resistance which the egg offers to freezing to a supposed vital principle, Mr Paget attributing it to the peculiar viscid state of the albumen.
9. A Contribution to the History of the Oxides of Manganese
Authors: Dittmar W.
Published: June 2016

It is known that oxides of manganese, when ignited in air, either absorb or lose oxygen, until they attain the composition expressed by the formula Mn3 O4. Schneider found that when they are heated in pure oxygen, they leave the oxide Mn2 O3.

This latter result is not what one might have expected, for we know of no positive action exerted on manganese oxides or on pure oxygen by nitrogen. Thus air should act like dilute oxygen, producing the same oxide.
10. Notice of Glacial Clay, with Arctic Shells, near Errol, on the Tay
Authors: Brown Thomas
Published: June 2016

The author referred to the paper on the Elie Glacial Clay, with Shells, read by him on the 2d of March 1863. During the succeeding summer he learned from Dr M'Bain, that shells had been found in a brickfield near Errol, but so badly preserved, that none of the species had been determined. During the autumn, while staying in the neighbourhood of Perth, he took occasion to visit the Errol brickfield, and found that the shells, which occur in considerable abundance, are precisely the same group with those at Elie.
11. Notes on the Boulder-Clay at Greenock and Port-Glasgow
Authors: Watson R. Boog
Published: June 2016

In Greenock, excavations have lately been made for a new gasometer. The works are now completed, but the superintendent, a most intelligent man, took me to the place, and told me what they had found in the course of digging.

The site of the excavation is close to the shore, and very little above the tide-mark.

At the south-east corner of the works, i.e., most remote from the sea, the workmen reached the rock at a depth of 20 feet. It was a soft shale, and I could not ascertain that any striations were observed on it. Probably there were none preserved on such material. Its upper surface was flat. Towards the sea, or north and west, the rock sloped downwards very steeply, and this seaward face was covered by a great bed or bank of sand, that sloped up from the edge of the rock, and as it receded rose higher as a bank.
Opening Address, Session 1864–65
Authors:   His Grace the Duke of Argyll
Published: June 2016

In opening this Session of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, at the close of my tenure of the Presidency, I must express my sincere regret on account of the small amount of attendance which it has been in my power to give. I can only assure you that, if I had had the opportunity, my attendance would have been far more regular; and that nothing but the impossibility of reconciling this with other duties has prevented my occupying this chair as often as the honour you have done me, and not less my own inclination, would have led me to do.
2. On the Principle of Onomatopoeia in Language
Authors: Blackie
Published: June 2016

Professor Blackie read a paper on Onomatopoeia, or the influence of the imitative principle on the formation of language. Without denying that a number of words in the later development of language were purely notional, that is, intended to represent an idea, not to imitate a sound, he strongly contended, that the whole original stock of language was either direct imitations of natural sounds, or analogical representations of things visible and tangible by things audible. As proofs of this he adduced various illustrations from the Aryan and the Semitic languages.
4. On the Solution of Perigal's Problem concerning the contact of Epicycloidal Curves
Authors: Sang E.
Published: June 2016

If the centre of a revolving wheel be carried with a uniform velocity, along a line; and if a tracing-point be fixed to an arm of the wheel, that point will trace out a curved line; to which the general name cycloid or trochoid has been given; the former appellation being often restricted to those cases in which the centre of the wheel moves in a straight line, while the name epicycloid is given when the same centre moves along the circumference of a circle.
4. On the Hill Forts, Terraces, and other remains of the Early Races in the South of Scotland
Authors: Chambers W.
Published: June 2016

The district referred to included Roxburghshire, Selkirkshire, and Peeblesshire, in which Mr Chambers had visited and examined about 200 hill forts. These ancient works are found on the tops of hills of moderate elevation, and are of different classes, shewing a progressive improvement in construction. Those of the smaller kind consist of one or two concentric rings of earth and stone, with a clear space in the centre, and measure from 150 to 250 feet across. Such are considered to be the earliest in construction, and are at the least 2000 years old, though they may have been kept in use later. Their first constructors were unquestionably the aboriginal Celtic tribes, to whom they served as places of refuge and defence in petty local wars, or on the occasion of invasion.
On a New Bituminous Substance, imported under the name of Coal from Brazil
Authors: Archer T. C.
Published: June 2016

This material was brought from Brazil to Liverpool, for the purpose of ascertaining its commercial value in this country. The importers submitted it to Dr Edwards, who reported that it yields a much larger percentage of oil than even the celebrated coal of Torbane Hill.

The crude oil of the first distillation has a sp. gr. of ·859.

On redistillation, a light and heavy oil are obtained from the crude oil.
1. Experimental Inquiry into the Laws of Conduction of Heat in Bars. Part II.—On the Conductivity of Wrought Iron, deduced from the Experiments of 1851
Authors: Forbes
Published: June 2016

This is a sequel to a paper read 28th April 1862 (See “Proceedings,” vol. iv. p. 607), and contains the results of the complete reduction of the observations on the conductivity of iron, by the application of the method there described. The thermometric readings are now rigorously corrected for scale errors, and for the difference of temperature between the bulb and the stem.

The methods of reduction, consisting of a combination of calculation and graphical projection, are the same as have been described in the first part of the paper. But the whole has beeen executed with minute attention to accuracy, and the avoidance of error of every kind.
2. On the Chemical Composition of the Waters of the Beauly, Inverness, and Moray Firths
Authors: Macadam Stevenson
Published: June 2016

These three firths denote different parts of an arm of the sea which has two constrictions;—one between Craigton Point and Longman Point, and the other between Fort George and the Chanonry Point. The upper part is known as the Beauly Firth, the intermediate portion as the Inverness Firth, and the outer part as the Moray Firth. Two rivers discharge their contents into this arm of the sea; the Beauly River, which flows in at the head of the Beauly Firth, and the Eiver Ness, which joins at the head of the Inverness Firth.
3. On Hemiopsy, or Half Vision
Authors: Brewster David
Published: June 2016

After describing the phenomena of hemiopsy, as observed by Dr Wollaston, M. Arago, and Mr Tyrrell, the author remarked that no attempt was made by these writers to ascertain the optical condition of the eye when it is said to be half blind, or to determine the locality and immediate cause of the complaint. Having experienced several attacks of hemiopsy, unaccompanied with any affections of the head or stomach, the author found that there was no insensibility to light, but merely an insensibility to the lines and shades of the object which disappeared. This insensibility commenced in both eyes, a little to the left of the foramen centrale, and extended itself irregularly to the margin of the retina on the left side. The parts of an object, or the letters of a word which disappear, are as bright as the ground around them, and are white if the ground is white, and always of the colour of the ground, so that the light of the ground has irradiated into the dark lines or shades of the picture on the retina, a phenomenon which can be produced in a sound eye by oblique vision.
1. On the World as a Dynamical and Immaterial World
Authors: Wyld Robert S.
Published: June 2016

What is matter? has been the question of philosophy from the earliest times. The author of this paper referred to the speculations of Thales and other philosophers of the Ionic school six hundred years before Christ, and to the more profound views of the Eleatic school, which had its origin about fifty years later, and the questioning which then arose regarding the reality of the knowledge given us by the senses.
1. On the Pronunciation of Greek
Authors: Blackie
Published: June 2016

On the revival of learning at the middle of the fifteenth century, the Hellenists of Europe took the pronunciation of Greek from their teachers, the learned Greek refugees who fled from Constantinople when that city was taken by the Turks in 1453, and who carried with them the Greek language, both as the living people who used it, and as the inheritors of the rich store of philological learning accumulated by an unbroken succession of Alexandrian, Roman, and Byzantine scholars.
6. On the Action of Hydriodic Acid on Mandelic Acid
Authors: Brown Alex. Crum
Published: June 2016

The relation of mandelic acid to benzoic aldehyd is so precisely the same as that of lactic acid to acetic aldehyd, that whatever constitution we assume for the latter acid, a similar one must be ascribed to the former.

The researches of Kolbe and Lautemann, and of Wislicenus, prove that lactic acid is oxypropionic acid. Mandelic acid must therefore be oxytoluic acid, and, indeed, it has been so formulated by Kolbe in his work on Organic Chemistry.
2. Notice of a large Calcareous Stalagmite brought from the Island of Bermuda in the year 1819, and now in the College of Edinburgh
Authors: Home David Milne
Published: June 2016

The author stated that this stalagmite was a calcareous deposit of a columnar shape, which had been brought to Edinburgh, about forty-six years ago, by his father, the late Admiral Sir David Milne.

Whilst commander-in-chief on the North American and West Indian Station during the three years ending 1819, Sir David had passed a part of every winter in the genial climate of Bermuda. He took much interest in the various objects of natural history abounding in the island, and particularly in its remarkable caves.
3. Meteorological Observations on Storms of Wind in October, November, and December of 1863
Authors: Buchan Alexander
Published: June 2016

The author had traced eleven distinct storms of wind passing over parts of Europe, between the 26th October and 18th December. With the view of ascertaining the state of the atmosphere during the progress of these storms, in respect of pressure, temperature, wind, cloud, and rain, he had collected observations from all parts of Great Britain and Ireland, as well as from many places on the Continent. He found that each storm was marked by concentric circles of equal atmospheric pressure.
2. On the Celtic Topography of Scotland
Authors: Skene W. F.
Published: June 2016

The author commenced by distinguishing between an etymology of names of places founded upon mere resemblance of sounds, and one where the names are analysed according to fixed laws, based upon sound philological principles and a comprehensive observation of facts. The former is the ordinary process to which they are subjected, and has characterised all systematic attempts hitherto made to analyse the topography of Scotland. It can lead only to fanciful renderings, and is incapable of yielding any certain results, while the latter becomes an important element in fixing the ethnology of the inhabitants of a country.
3. Note on the Behaviour of Iron Filings, strewn on a vibrating plate, and exposed to the action of a magnetic pole
Authors: Tait
Published: June 2016

While a horizontal plate is in a state of rapid vibration (as in Chladni's experiments), iron filings strewed on the surface, near a point of maximum vibration, are prevented from being scattered to the nodal lines by a magnetic pole held above the plate, but, if the pole be held below, they are speedily dissipated. If too powerful a pole be used, or if the magnet be held too near the plate, the filings nearest to the pole are not dispersed in the latter case.
6. On the Ganglia and Nerves of the Heart, and their connection with the Cerebro-Spinal and Sympathetic Systems in Mammalia
Authors: Pettigrew James Bell
Published: June 2016

The Memoir, of which the subjoined is an abstract, is based upon seventy dissections, and is intended as a contribution to our knowledge of the arrangement of the cardiac nerves in the mammalia.
1. Notes for a Comparison of the Glaciation of the West of Scotland with that of Arctic Norway
Authors: Geikie Archibald
Published: June 2016

In the course of the detailed investigations which, during the past six or seven years, have been carried on by the officers of the Geological Survey into the history of the glacial period in Britain, the desire naturally arose to compare the phenomena of glaciation so familiar in this country with those of some other region where they might be linked on to the action of still existing glaciers. No other part of Europe offered so many facilities for such a comparison as were to be found in Scandinavia. It was accordingly planned by my colleague, Dr John Young, and myself, to visit Norway in the summer of 1863. Unforeseen circumstances delayed the journey, and ultimately deprived me of the companionship of my friend.
2. On the Third Co-ordinate Branch of the Higher Calculus
Authors: Sang Edward
Published: June 2016

The object of the paper was to point out that the theory of variables has a third branch, bearing to the Differential and Integral Calculus a relation somewhat analogous to that which the theory of Logarithms bears to Involution and Evolution.

In the theory of Functions there are three connected variable quantities, viz., the Primary, the Function, and the Derivative. When the relation between the primary and the function is given, the discovery of the derivative belongs to the Differential Calculus. When that between the primary and the derivative is given, the function is found by help of the Integral Calculus. And the general problem to find the primary when the relation between the function and its derivative is given, belongs to a third branch, which may be called the Calculus of Primaries.
1. On the Laws of the Fertility of Women
Authors: Duncan J. Matthews
Published: June 2016

This paper was a sequel of a paper read to the Royal Society, and published in the 23d volume of the “Transactions.” That paper was entitled, “On the Variations of the Fertility and Fecundity of Women, according to age;” and among other conclusions therein announced, was one to the effect that fecundity, or likelihood of child-bearing after marriage, increased from the earliest child-bearing age till about twenty-five, and thereafter gradually decreased. In the present paper, the laws regulating such fertility after marriage are demonstrated. The chief data on which the arguments for these laws are based are derived from an analysis of 16,301 families, in connection with which entries were made in 1855 in the public registers for Edinburgh and Glasgow.
2. On the Classification of Chemical Substances by Means of Generic Radicals
Authors: Brown Alexander Crum
Published: June 2016

In this paper the author proposes to use for purposes of classification those radicals or parts of molecules which are common to genera of substances, and within which the changes characteristic of these genera take place.
4. On some Geometrical Constructions connected with the Elliptic Motion of Unresisted Projectiles
Authors: Tait
Published: June 2016

In “Tait and Steele's Dynamics of a Particle,” chap, iv., a number of geometrical constructions are given, some possibly for the first time, connected with the motion of projectiles in parabolic paths in vacuo. I have recently been led to remark that most of these propositions still hold when we substitute, for the uniform action of gravity in parallel lines, the action of gravity supposed to be directed to the earth's centre, and to vary inversely as the square of the distance from that point. My excuse for bringing so simple a matter before the Society is; that the propositions are in themselves curious and elegant, and that I am not aware of their having been before mentioned. A very few examples will suffice to indicate the change of form required by the more general assumed conditions.
6. On the Theory of the Refraction and Dispersion of Light. Part I
Authors: Catton Alfred R.
Published: June 2016

Supposing the phenomena of light to be caused by the indefinitely small vibrations of a highly elastic medium pervading space, it is a simple problem to determine the motion of such a medium in vacuo, or in space, where matter does not exist, as in these cases the problem is reduced to the determination of the motion of a homogeneous elastic medium.

On proceeding, however, to investigate the motion of the ethereal medium in crystals, for the purpose of accounting for the phenomena of crystalline refraction, the question arises, whether there is an action between the material molecules and the etherial medium. In other words, are the laws of the refraction of the ether within crystals, independent of the existence of material molecules, so that the ether may be treated as a single elastic medium, or are the phenomena of crystalline refraction produced, wholly or partially, by a direct action between the material molecules and the ether?
1. Observations on the Marine Zoology of North Uist, Outer Hebrides,—(Cœlenterata, Mollusca, Echinodermata, Gephyrea, and Pisces).
Authors: M'Intosh W. C.
Published: June 2016

The surface of the island is less richly supplied with animal life than the ocean, and, indeed, with vegetable likewise. The grass is coarse and stunted, and even the hill tops are boggy; while the sea border has rich crops of Fuci, Laminarise, and other sea-weeds, and harbours hosts of animals, both vertebrate and invertebrate. The inhabitants seem to take certain of the circumstances in which they are placed to the best advantage. Kelp is manufactured from the sea-weeds; the drift-wood makes the framework of their hovel roofs, and is applied, besides, to many other useful purposes; while fishing is universal. The soil, again, on the eastern side, with a single exception, is cultivated with neither vigour nor profit, the islanders having a tendency to be a pastoral and fishing, rather than an agricultural race.
3. (1.) Description of Erpetoichthys, a new Genus of Ganoid Fish, from Old Calabar, Western Africa; forming an addition to the Family Polypterini
Authors: Smith John Alexander
Published: June 2016

In the beginning of January 1865, the author received from the Rev. Alexander Robb, Old Calabar, a package of specimens of natural history preserved in spirits. Among these were two small ganoid fish. They were, however, imperfect, having been torn across near the anal region, and their caudal extremities were wanting. The characters of the fish could not, therefore, be completely determined. The author, however, exhibited them at a meeting of the Royal Physical Society, on the 22d March 1865, and stated that they were allied to the genus Polypterus; but from various differences in character, to be afterwards detailed, and especially the great relative length of their bodies, and the apparently total absence of ventral fins, he would place them provisionally in a new genus, which, from their general aspect and form, he designated Erpetoichthys, the reptile or serpent fish; and the species, from the locality where it was found, he named E. Calabaricus.
2. Preliminary Notice of the Great Fin Whale, recently stranded at Longniddry
Authors: Turner
Published: June 2016

This communication was preliminary to a more extended memoir which the author hopes to lay before the Society during the Session.

The colour, general form, and dimensions of the animal, were taken when the whale was lying on the shore at Longniddry. The observations on its internal structure were made whilst it was undergoing the operation of flensing at Kirkcaldy, or on specimens which were brought over to the Anatomical Museum of the University. These specimens it was his intention to preserve in the Museum. In conducting the examination he had been ably and willingly seconded by the thoroughly cordial and enthusiastic co-operation of his assistant Mr Stirling, and his pupils Mr Millen Coughtrey, and Mr James Foulis.
5. On a Bow seen on the Surface of Ice
Authors: Maxwell J. Clerk
Published: June 2016

On the 26th of January, about noon, I observed the appearance of a coloured bow on the frozen surface of the ditch which surrounds S. John's College, Cambridge. Its appearance and position seemed to correspond with those of an ordinary primary rainbow. I at once made a rough measurement of the angle on the board of a book which I had with me, and then borrowed from Dr Parkinson, President of S. John's College, a sextant, with which I found that the angle between the bright red and the shadow of the large mirror was 41° 50′, and that for bright blue 40° 30′. The angle for the extreme red of the primary bow, as given in Parkinson's Optics, is 42° 20′, and that for violet 40° 32′. The bows formed by ice crystals are seen on the same side as the sun, and not on the opposite side.
1. Note on the Atomic Volume of Solid Substances
Authors: Dewar James
Published: June 2016

The investigation of the volume retained by different elementary substances, when combined in the solid condition, has attracted the attention of many chemists. We have only to look at the laborious memoirs of Schröter, Kopp, Playfair and Joule, Boullay, Filhol, and others, to be convinced of the great amount of labour expended on the subject. Nor is it at all remarkable that so many workers should take to this field of research, when we remember the simplicity of the laws regulating the combining volumes of gaseous substances, and the probable extension of some such similar law to the solid condition of matter. Emboldened by analogy, the forementioned workers endeavoured to find some constant to which volumes of elements and compounds held the relation of some simple multiple, and thus extend the apparent simplicity of Prout's law of combining weights to combining volumes.
6. On the Bones of a Seal found in Red Clay near Grangemouth, with Remarks on the Species
Authors: Turner
Published: June 2016

Towards the end of last autumn, one of my pupils, Mr William Stirling, B.Sc., requested me to determine some bones which had been found whilst sinking a new shaft for a pit in the Grangemouth coal-field. On examination, I found these bones to be the two halves of the lower jaw, a fragment of the upper jaw with some loose teeth, the right temporal bone, the atlas with fragments of other vertebræ, the glenoid part of the left scapula, the right astragalus and femur, and small fragments of other bones of the skeleton of a seal. The animal had not reached the adult state, for the epiphyses of the femur were not united to the shaft. The bones were imbedded in a stiff red clay.
1. On the Rate of Mortality of Assured Lives as experienced by Ten Assurance Companies in Scotland from 1815 to 1863
Authors: Meikle James
Published: June 2016

The mortality of assured lives is introduced by a short statement of the process followed in the obtainment of the rate of mortality among the male population of England and Wales during seven teen years, and in which the results are compared with the rate obtained by following the same process with the male population of Scotland during ten years. A statement is given of the method employed for collecting the facts referring to assured lives, and of tabulating the results with the view of extracting, not only the total numbers entering upon and dying in each year of life, but of exhibiting the experience of several highly interesting and important sections of risks, and more especially with the view of showing the nature and benefits accruing from the assurance of selected healthy lives.
2. On Change of Apparent Colour by Obliquity of Vision
Authors: Bow Robert H.
Published: June 2016

I discovered the peculiarity of chromatic vision, which is the subject of this paper, in the month of January, when conducting some experiments upon the perfection of definition at diflferent parts of the retina; and I may introduce the subject by first referring to these experiments.
3. On the Structure of Tubifex
Authors: M'Intosh W. C.
Published: June 2016

The paper consisted of a detailed account of the external form; the arrangement of the body-cavity and its walls; the perivisceral space and corpuscles; the digestive, circulatory, and generative systems.

It was specially mentioned, in regard to the perivisceral corpuscles, that the author was not at all inclined to think that they originated from the glandular fatty coating of the digestive tract and the dorsal blood-vessel. The corpuscles seem rather to be the product of the perivisceral cavity itself and its special (free) contents. This view requires no stretch of ordinary physiological principles, and is quite in keeping with what is found in other groups. In the Nemerteans, for instance, a complex corpusculated fluid is produced within a closed chamber with smooth walls.
2. On the Heat Disengaged in the Combination of Acids and Bases. Second Memoir
Authors: Andrews Thomas
Published: June 2016

In the beginning of this paper the author recapitulates the five fundamental laws of the heat of combination, which he had deduced from his previous researches, and which form the subject of several memoirs published in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy and of the Royal Society of London, from 1841 to 1848.
2. Laboratory Notes: On Thermo-Electricity
Authors: Tait
Published: June 2016

In a paper presented to the Society in 1867–8 I deduced from certain hypothetical considerations regarding Dissipation of Energy results connected with the thermal and electric conductivity of bodies, the electric convection of heat, &c. As these were all of a confessedly somewhat speculative character, I printed at the time only that connected with thermal conductivity, which I had the means of comparing with experiment, and which seemed to accord fairly with Forbes' experimental results. But the assumption on which this was based was essentially involved in all the other portions of the paper.
On the Physiology of Wings: being an Analysis of the Movements by which Flight is produced in the Insect, Bat, and Bird
Authors: Pettigrew James Bell
Published: June 2016

In the present memoir the author enters very fully into the figure-of-8 wave movements, described by the wing in space, to which he first directed attention in March 1867. He has adduced the experiments with natural and artificial wings, on which his description was originally based, and has shown, by the aid of original models and a large number of diagrams and drawings, that artificial wings can be made to approach indefinitely near to natural ones, not only in their structure, but also in their movements.
2. Certain Phenomena applied in Solution of Difficulties connected with the Theory of Vision
Authors: Wyld R. S.
Published: June 2016

The theory of vision has been the subject of much more scientific study than that of any of our other senses, but notwithstanding this, the subject is still encumbered with some difficulties and contradictions, the solution of which is essential to our having a true and complete theory. Such are the questions,—first,—regarding single and double vision, as depending on the excitement of corresponding, or, as they are generally called, identical points of the retinæ; second,—the question whether perception is in the retinæ or in the brain; and lastly, the question regarding the decussation and ultimate course of the fibres of the optic nerves.
4. On the Capture of a Sperm Whale on the Coast of Argyleshire, with a Notice of other Specimens caught on the Coast of Scotland
Authors: Turner
Published: June 2016

In the autumn of last year, whilst spending a few days in the neighbourhood of Oban, I visited Dunstaffnage, and in the courtyard of the Castle saw the two halves of the lower jaw-bone of a sperm-whale. On inquiry, I learned that they were the relics of a whale captured some years ago in the neighbouring sea. From some of the older inhabitants of Oban I gleaned some particulars respecting this animal; and as no record of its capture has as yet found a place in zoological literature, I am induced, as the sperm-whale so very seldom visits our shores, to communicate a brief notice to the Society.