Annual Report of the Belfast Naturalists' Field ClubPhillips & Sons, 1863 |
Common terms and phrases
Abbey Ammonites ancient animal Annual Archæology Ballintoy basalt beautiful beds Belfast Naturalists Best Collection Botanic Carboniferous Carrickfergus Castle Espie chalk church clay cliffs coal coast Committee Conversazione County Antrim Cushendall deposit district Donegall street excursion exhibited existence feet ferns Field Club Field Meetings flakes flint flora flowers fossils geological glacial Glen Glenarm Greer hexradiate Hill Holywood HUGH ROBINSON interesting Ireland Irish island Islandmagee James Thomson John large number Larne Lias Lignite limestone Lisburn locality Lough Neagh Malcomson microscopic Miss mountain Mountpottinger Museum Natural History neighbourhood North objects occur origin park party Patterson period plants present Prize Professor Ralph Tate read a paper remains road Robert rocks S. A. Stewart sarcode Secretaries Session shells Society species specimens spicules Sponges stone Swanston Sydenham terrace Thomas Thomas Workman tion Ulster University square Whiteabbey WILLIAM GRAY Windsor ΙΟ
Popular passages
Page 40 - Thou makest thine appeal to me: I bring to life, I bring to death: The spirit does but mean the breath: I know no more.
Page 85 - Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds you stuff of any degree of fineness ; but, nevertheless, what you get out depends on what you put in ; and as the grandest mill in the world will not extract wheat-flour from peascods, so pages of formulae will not get a definite result out of loose data.
Page 55 - ... and arrives at the conclusion that the answer to this question is to be found in the intimate relations which subsist between the gaseous and liquid states of matter. In the abrupt change which occurs when the gases are compressed to a certain volume at temperatures below the critical point, molecular forces are brought into play which produce a sudden change of volume ; and during this process it is easy to distinguish, by optical characters, the carbonic acid...
Page 67 - ... and shall take to him an English surname of one towne, as Sutton, Chester, Trym, Skryne, Corke, Kinsale: or colour, as white, blacke, browne: or art or science, as smith or carpenter; or office, as cooke, butler; and that he and his issue shall use this name...
Page 55 - The properties described in this communication, as exhibited by carbonic acid, are not peculiar to it, but are generally true of all bodies which can be obtained as gases and liquids. Nitrous oxide, hydrochloric acid, ammonia, sulphuric ether, and sulphuret of carbon, all exhibited, at fixed pressures and temperatures, critical points, and rapid changes of volume with flickering movements, when the temperature or pressure was changed in the neighbourhood of those points.
Page 84 - ... living forms is the fact that they persist through a series of deposits which geology informs us have taken a long while to make. If the geological clock is wrong, all the naturalist will have to do is to modify his notions of the rapidity of change accordingly. And I venture to point out that, when we are told that the limitation of the period during which living beings have inhabited this planet to one, two, or three hundred million years requires a complete revolution, in geological speculation...
Page 84 - Biology takes her time from geology. The only reason we have for believing in the slow rate of the change in living forms is the fact that they persist through a series of deposits which, geology informs us, have taken a long while to make. If the geological clock is wrong, all the naturalist will have to do is to modify his notions of the rapidity of change accordingly.
Page 55 - James Thomson, of the influence of pressure on the temperature at which liquefaction occurs, and verified experimentally by Sir. W. Thomson, points, as it appears to me, to the direction this inquiry must take; and in the case at least of those bodies which expand in liquefying, and whose melting-points are raised by pressure, the transition may possibly be effected. But this must be a subject...
Page 3 - That the Members of the Club shall hold not less than three Field Meetings during the year, in the most interesting localities for investigating the Natural History of the district. That the days and places of such regular meetings be selected at the Annual Meeting, and that ten clear days...
Page 22 - When decorative carving such as I have described is attempted by any semicivilized people, as the builders of these sepulchral cairns must have been, we naturally expect to find amongst it some representation of objects commonly known or familiar to the builders, as well as indications of their particular kind of worship — and, if they had a written language, some of its letters: with this idea in view, I have drawn and studied all the carvings in question; and I think, if we allow a little play...