Proceedings of the Fifth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science: Held in Dublin, During the Week from the 10th to the 15th of August, Inclusive : with an Alphabetical List of the Members Enrolled in Dublin, Volume 5

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Page 5 - To give a stronger impulse and a more systematic direction to scientific inquiry, — to promote the intercourse of those who cultivate Science in different parts of the British Empire, with one another and with foreign philosophers, — to obtain a more general attention to the objects of Science, and a removal of any disadvantages of a public kind which impede its progress.
Page 91 - ... of lead, as recommended by Dr. Jacob. If no improvement followed the use of the liquor plumbi, in two or three days, he then...
Page 30 - ... represents the sovereign here, and is to us the visible image of the head of that vast empire; and the joy with which we welcome to our assemblies and to our hospitality those eminent strangers who have come to us from foreign lands, rises almost above the sphere of private friendship, and partakes of the dignity of a compact between all the nations of the earth. Forgive me that I have not yet been able to speak calmly in such a presence, and on such a theme. But it is not merely in its magnitude...
Page 5 - to give a stronger impulse and a more systematic direction to scientific inquiry, — to promote the intercourse of those who cultivate Science in different parts of the...
Page 30 - ... members the opinions, views, and discoveries of each other; in calling upon eminent men to prepare reports upon the existing state of knowledge in the principal departments of science; and in publishing only abstracts or notices of all those other contributions which it has not as a body called for; in short, in attempting to induce men of science to work more together than they do elsewhere, to establish a system of more strict co-operation between the labourers in one common field, and thus...
Page 30 - ... and thus to effect, more fully than other societies can do, the combination of intellectual exertions. In other societies, the constitution and practice are such, that the labours of the several members are comparatively unconnected, and few attempts are systematically made to combine and harmonize them together ; so that if we except that general and useful action of the social spirit upon the intellect of which I have already spoken, and the occasional incitement to specific research, by the...
Page 33 - We indeed cannot dream that gravitation shall ever become obsolete; perhaps it is about to receive some new and striking confirmation; but Newton never held that the law of the inverse square was the only law of the action of body upon body; and the question is, whether some other law or mode of action, coexisting with this...
Page 29 - That mysterious joy — incomprehensible if man were wholly mortal — which accompanies the hope of influencing unborn generations ; that rapture, solemn and sublime, with which a human mind, possessing or possessed by some great truth, sees in prophetic vision that truth acknowledged by mankind, and itself long ages afterward remembered and associated therewith, as its interpreter and minister, and sharing in the offering duly paid of honour and of love, till it becomes a power upon the earth,...
Page 58 - ... the change they effect in their structure. Mr. Griffith next described the older and newer trap districts, mentioning many interesting particulars connected with them, such as the capping of quartz rock by greenstone, the concentric arrangement of the beds of greenstone in Donegal, and the occurrence of quartz rock between two beds of greenstone, the quartz being columnar, the trap, above and below it, not. In Slieve Gullin greenstone and granite were stated to be actually mixed together, whilst...
Page 33 - ... by the light of theory. But it ought surely to be deemed the highest problem of astronomy, to examine with the utmost diligence into that which has been often said, but not as yet in every case sufficiently established, whether theory and experience do really always agree. When the solution of this weighty problem shall have been most studiously made trial of, in all its parts, then either will the theory of Newton be perfectly and absolutely confirmed, or else it will be known beyond all doubt...

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