It is with no affectation of humility, it is with no mock modesty that I earnestly bespeak your kind indulgence for the discharge of the duty to which I have been called this evening. My diffidence in this matter arises from no want of interest in the work assigned to me, but from knowing how much I lack that extent of knowledge and that degree of experience which seem to be required for the position in which I am placed, and for such an audience as I have the honour to address. I find different scientific associations adopt different rules. In some cases the secretary makes, in name of the council, a general report of the whole proceedings during the past year; in fact, very much in the business style of the secretary of a railway company. In some cases, the address is delivered on the anniversary of the society by the president, who makes a distribution of its medals and prizes previous to his vacating his office.

In this paper the writer proposes to revise and extend the argument used thirty years ago by the late Professor Schouw of Copenhagen, as to the climate of Palestine, founded on the coincident cultivation of the Date Palm, and the Vine: the one plant nearly ceasing to bring its fruit to maturity when the other begins to be productive. Tropical heat is as necessary to the maturity of the date as it is injurious to the manufacture of wine.

The author stated, as the results of some experiments which he had made on the phosphorescence of a species of Beröe (Idyia) which abounded during the last summer in the Firth of Forth, that the light is never emitted as long as the animal is exposed to daylight; and that withdrawal from the daylight for some time is necessary, in order to impart to the Beröe the property of phosphorescence.

In this communication the author gave the results of some careful observations and dissections he had made of a species of Beröe (Idyia), obtained in abundance during the last summer in the Firth of Forth.

In the anatomy of the adult animal, several points were described which seem to have been hitherto either overlooked or imperfectly examined. In the digestive system, the author noticed the presence of two richly ciliated membranous semi-elliptical flaps, which just before the stomach terminates in the narrow neck which leads into the bifurcating funnel, spring from its walls, and extend, by their free extremities, into the neck and commencement of the funnel.

The author considers the usual division of the Heteropoda into the two families of Firolidæ, and Atlantidæ as unsatisfactory, and arranges them in three families, according to the following zoological characters.

The authors, after a brief historical introduction, proceeded to give a detailed account of the anatomy of this parasitic crustacean, the description comprising that of the female and male, and, so far as they had been enabled to trace it, of the larva also.

In vol. xxii. of the Transactions of the Society, Prof. W. Thomson has given (after Fourier) the general solution of the problem of underground conduction, and he and Professor Everett have given methods more or less accurate of determining from observation the specific constants for any locality. These are mainly applied to the results of Principal Forbes's observations on the Calton Hill and other places near Edinburgh. (Trans., vol. xvi.)

This little instrument differs from the ordinary theodolite in the means by which the direction of the object under examination is indicated.

The simplest contrivance for marking the direction of a distant object is a straight rod. This, with the very obvious improvement of studs at the ends, was the only instrument available to the ancients for astronomical observations; it is yet employed in gunnery, and even by surveyors in the plain-table and cross-staff.

In April 1860, I brought under the notice of the Society a classified list of the Birds of Linlithgowshire. The list was accompanied with notes, “On the Structure and Habits of some of the Rarer Species.” After the publication of the Society's Proceedings, several communications were addressed to me by well-known ornithologists, chiefly with the view of ascertaining, if some of the rarer species named had been known to nest in the district. This led to the revision of the list, and to the exclusion of such species as are either rare visitors only, or winter birds of passage. A List of the Birds of Berwickshire, drawn up on the same plan, is now associated with this.

To illustrate my lectures on Molecular Forces, I sometimes use piles of marbles of equal size. Each of these is taken to represent the sphere of action of a symmetrical integrant molecule, in the sense that the attractive and repulsive forces necessary to a theory of molecules are balanced, when the distance of two molecules is equal to the diameter of the sphere. If the integrant molecules be not symmetrical, their spheres of action will be spheroids or ellipsoids.

In arranging such piles, there are two obvious ways of constructing the layers, and two of applying layer to layer.

The author proposed in this paper to give more detailed observations on the salmon fisheries of England and Wales than could be done in the compass of an official report, and at the same time to add notes on the natural history of the migratory species of Salmonidæ met with in these fisheries. The first part related to the Severn and Wye.

No subject has been more legislated upon than that of the regulation of the salmon fisheries of Great Britain and Ireland; and while this indicates the importance attached to them, it has been at the same time mainly caused by the want of a correct knowledge of the facts relating to them, an ignorance of the habits and natural economy of the species, and by parties looking at one or two insulated points only, instead of viewing the subject and the various interests connected with it as one.

On 27th November 1861, eleven wardroom officers of the “Marlborough,” including the author, were simultaneously attacked with extreme faintness, nausea, bilious vomiting, and diarrhœa; the attacks lasting five or six hours—in some of the cases being of great severity, and attended with much depression. The treatment, which was successful in every instance, consisted in encouraging free vomiting, and the administration of stimulants and anodynes. At the same time a series of similar cases occurred in H.M.S. “Agamemnon,” and five other ships in the harbour.

One of Professor W. Thomson's Divided-Ring Electrometers having been recently procured for the Natural Philosophy collection in the University, we have made use of it in repeating and extending the experiments of Volta, Pouillet, and others, on the electricity produced during the evaporation of various bodies. In some cases our results agree with those already known, but in others we find effects differing totally in kind or degree from the accepted ones; and with some substances we find occasionally contradictory indications among our own results.

In this paper the author gave a brief account of the various phenomena of fluid and gaseous cavities which he had discovered in diamond, topaz, beryl, and other minerals. He described—

1. Cavities with two immiscible fluids, the most expansible of which has received the name of Brewstolyne, and the most dense that of Cryptolyne, from the American and French mineralogists.

2. Cavities containing only one of these fluids.

3. Cavities containing the two fluids, and also crystals of various primitive forms, some of which melt by heat and recrystallise in cooling.

4. Cavities containing gas and vapour.

Comparative anatomists have of late directed considerable attention to the determination of the relations of the cerebrum and cerebellum. This has been in great measure due to the publication by Professor Owen of a system of classification of the Mammalia founded on their cerebral characters. The statement made by that eminent anatomist, that the posterior, or third, lobe of the cerebrum is peculiar and common to the genus Homo, and that equally peculiar are the “posterior horn of the lateral ventricle” and the “hippo-campus minor,” which characterise the hind lobe, has led to much discussion. Various anatomists have published descriptions and drawings of dissections of the brains of many of the Quadrumana, especially of several of the higher apes.

In the introduction to this paper, the author pointed out the prominent physical features of the district in which the landslip occurred. At the point where the trap-ridge, which stretches in a south-west direction from Linlithgow to the neighbourhood of Airdrie, sendsone irregular fork to the north-west, and another to the south-west, a broad depression occurs. In this lies the Auchingray moss, the scene of the landslip. Here the parish of New Monkland, Lanarkshire, meets that of Slamannan, Stirlingshire, The following figure is a rough plan of the ground between the Slamannan Railway and Haldane's Moss Road. The area specially influenced by the landslip is enclosed by dotted lines.

This paper consists of two parts. In the first part an account is given of the rain-fall in the Lake District during the year 1861, chiefly remarkable for its great amount (exceeding the average by many inches), and varying in different localities from sixty inches on the skirts of the district, for instance, at Kendal and Mirehouse, the latter four miles northward of Keswick, to 123 and 182 inches; the former, the fall at Grasmere, where approaching the higher mountains, the latter at Seathwaite in Borrowdale, a spot in the midst of them.