Address read at the anniversary meeting of the Royal Society, 1852 / The Earl Rosse.

  • Royal Society (Great Britain)
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address read at the anniversary meeting of the Royal Society, 1852 / The Earl Rosse. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    the many new instruments which are offered to scientific men, so that their real merit may he ascertained, and waste of time and dis- appointment be prevented, is to render a very important service to science. Regnault’s apparatus, recently purchased, has already supplied Standard Thermometers for Government expeditions, and the Committee have received numerous applications for Standard Thermometers constructed with it, from distinguished physicists, and the principal opticians. Dr. Carpenter has completed his drawings of Foraminifera, ninety in number, and Professor E. Forbes has reported so favourably of them that I trust they will soon be published. A subject of considerable interest has been taken up by Mr. Homer; —geological researches in Egypt; the question at issue being the rate at which the alluvial land of the Nile valley was formed, from the first cataract to the sea. The French at the end of the last century made out what they considered to have been the rate of secular increase, about six inches in a century; and the object of the present researches is to ascertain whether that average rate may be assumed to be correct, and if so to apply the scale to vertical sections of the Nile deposit, obtained by sinking pits in the immediate vicinity of monuments, the age of which is known. Extensive re- searches were made in the summer of 1851, liberally aided by Abbas Pacha, on the site of the ancient city of Heliopolis, and during the last summer on the site of the ancient city of Memphis. The ope- rations have been conducted by an engineer in the Pacha’s service. Mr. Horner has had several letters from him describing the operations at Heliopolis : he has also received specimens of the layers of soil passed through in the nine sinkings at Heliopolis, a specimen from the deposit of the Nile water at the time of inundation. Some of the soil from the Barage, and some specimens of Nile water have been analysed under the direction of Dr. Hofmann, at the Royal College of Chemistry. Detailed reports have not yet been received from the engineer, either as to the operations at Heliopolis, or at Memphis; until then it would be premature to form any conclusions. The success of the system of self-registration as applied to mag- netism, and meteorological instruments, and to which Mr. Brooke had contributed not a little, induced him to consider the practicability of contriving apparatus to render the force-magnetometers self-cor-