Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science / delivered by the President, John Phillips ... in the Town Hall, at Birmingham, September 6, 1865.

  • Phillips, John, 1800-1874.
Date:
1865
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science / delivered by the President, John Phillips ... in the Town Hall, at Birmingham, September 6, 1865. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    are now reaping tlie fruits, were undertaken in con¬ sequence of the reports on special branches of Science which appear in tlie early volumes of our Transac¬ tions—reports in which particular data were re¬ quested for confirming or correcting known general¬ izations, or for establishing new ones. Thus a passage in Professor Airy s report on Physical Astronomy ® first tiuried the attention of Adams to the mathe¬ matical vision of Neptune ; Luhhock^s Report on Tides P came before the experimental researches and reductions, which since 1834 have so often engaged the attention of Whewell and Airy and Haughton, with results so valuable and so suggestive of further undertakings. Among these results may be placed additional knowledge of the probable depth of the channels of the sea. For before the desire of tele¬ graphic communication with America had caused the bed of the North Atlantic to be explored by soundings to a depth seldom exceeding three miles, there was reason to conclude from the investigations of Whewell on Cotidal Lines ^ that a depth of nine miles was attained in the South Atlantic, and from the separate computations of Airy and Haughton tliat a somewhat greater depth occuiTed hi a part of o Reports of the British Association for 1832, p. 154. Laplace had indeed observed that “ tlie planet Uranus and his satellites, lately discovered, give reason to suspect the existence of some planets not yet observedthereby encouraging the search for new discoveries in our own system. (Exp. du Syst. du Monde, 1799, 4to. ]). 350.) P Reports of the British Association, 1832. ^ Trans, of Roy. Soc. 1833.