Washington.-Ninth Census of the United States. Statistics of the Population.Statistics of Wealth and Industry. 3 vols. 4to. 1872.-From the United States Government. Medical Essays compiled from Reports to the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, by Medical Officers of the U.S. Navy. 8vo. 1872. From the United States Government. The Practical Use of Meteorological Reports and Weather Maps. 8vo. 1871.—From the United States Government. Tables and Formulæ useful in Surveying, Geodesy, and Practical Astronomy, including Projection of Maps. 8vo. 1873. From the United States Government.

Directions for Water Level and Meteorological Observations,
and the Registry of Periodical Phenomena. 8vo. 1871.
-From the United States Government.

Reports of Explorations in 1869-72 of Colorado River of the
West and its Tributaries, by Professor J. W. Powell.

8vo.-From the United States Government.

Reports of Explorations and Surveys to ascertain the Prac-
ticability of a Ship Canal between the Atlantic and Pacific
Oceans by the way of Tehuantepec. 4to. 1872.-From
Sir Charles Hartley.

Report on the Difference of Longitude between Washington
and Ogden, Utah, by J. R. Eastman. 4to. 1876.-From
the U.S. Observatory.

Papers relating to the Transit of Venus in 1874, prepared under the direction of the Commission authorised by Congress. Part 2. 4to.-From the U.S. Naval Observatory. Investigation of Corrections to Hansen's Tables of the Moon ; with Tables of their application. 4to. 1876.-From the U.S. Observatory.

Besides the donations above mentioned, the Society has received from the United States Government many important works, comprising Journals and Reports of Congress and its Committees, Reports issued by the various Departments of the State, and miscellaneous Papers relating to the civil, military, and naval administration of the United States. These works, though too numerous to specify here, are duly entered in the General Catalogue of the Library.

Wellington.-Statistics of New Zealand.

1874, 1875. Folio.

From the New Zealand Government.

Meteorological Report for 1875, including Returns for

1873-74, and Abstracts for previous years.

the Geological Survey Department.

8vo.-From

Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Annual Reports of the Colonial
Museum of New Zealand. 8vo. From the Geological
Survey Department.

Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute.
Vols. I.-IX., 1868-76. 8vo.-From the Institute.

Whitby. The Fifty-Fourth Report of the Whitby Literary and
Philosophical Society. 8vo.-From the Society.

Zurich.

- Neue Denkschriften der allgemeinen schweizerischen Gessellschaft für die gesammten Naturwissenschaften (Nouveaux Mémoires de la Société Helvétique des Sciences Naturelles). Band XXVII. Abth. 1. 4to.-From the

Society. Vierteljahrsschrift der Naturforschenden Gessellschaft zu Zürich. Jahrg. XIX., XX. 8vo. From the Society. Schweizerische Meteorologische Beobachtungen herausgegeben von der Meteorologischen Centralanstalt der Schweizerischen Naturforschenden Gessellschaft. Lief. 2-5. Jahrg. XIII., 1855; Jahrg. XVI., 1858. 1876. From the Society.

4to.

34

VOL. IX.

SIR WILLIAM THOMSON, President, in the Chair.

The following Council were elected :

President.

SIR WILLIAM THOMSON, Knt., LL.D.

Honorary Vice-Presidents, having passed the Chair.
HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF ARGYLL.

SIR ROBERT CHRISTISON, BART., M.D.

Vice-Presidents.

Rev. W. LINDSAY ALEXANDER, D.D. | Principal Sir ALEX. GRANT, Bart. DAVID STEVENSON, Memb. In. C.E. DAVID MILNE HOME, LL.D.

Monday, 3d December 1877.

Principal Sir ALEXANDER GRANT, Bart., one of the Vice-Presidents of the Society, read the following Opening Address:

GENTLEMEN,-I find it recorded* that in the year 1662, which was the first year of the incorporation of the Royal Society of London, the celebrated mathematician, Robert Hooke, drew up "Proposals for the good of the Royal Society," the third article of which was as follows:-"That every member of the Society shall be equally obliged to promote the ends thereof by paying 52s. yearly, and by doing some one duty that shall be charged on him by the Council once a year, or, if his occasions will not permit, to pay 52s. more per annum. This proposed salutary rule does not seem ever to have been enacted by the Royal Society of London, nor do I believe that any analogous article forms part of the statutes of this Society, and yet it is in accordance with the spirit of such a rule that I appear before you this evening.

When the Council of this Society requested me, only four weeks ago, to open the ensuing session by addressing you, I at once, though perhaps imprudently, resolved to obey them, and to do "the one duty charged upon me by the Council." But in the meantime I have become more and more conscious of the fact, that probably no length of preparation would have enabled me to offer you an address worthy of this occasion and of my predecessors in this chair, and that it would be a simple impossibility to accomplish this within a few weeks at a period of the year when the distractions are so manifold that I can scarcely get a clear morning, not to speak of a clear day. I must therefore ask you to accept for the nonce some discourse on matters which are a very old story now. I know that the Royal Society is like those Athenians of whom it was said that they "spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing." Therefore, an idea to be suitable for the Royal Society ought to be brand new. But I shelter myself under the reflection, that the topic which has suggested itself to my mind for this evening is one which might perhaps always claim a certain welcome in this For I thought of whiling away the opening half-hour of our

room.

* In Weld's History of the Royal Society, vol. i. p. 139. To this excellent history the following paper is much indebted.