SCIENCE AND MODERN DISCOVERY.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1225, 21 August 1885, Page 3

SCIENCE AND MODERN DISCOVERY.

The present occupant of Sir Isaac Newton’s Professorial Chair at Cambridge University. Professor G. G. Stokes, F.R.S.. who is also Secretary of the Royal Society of England, delivered a remarkable address at the Annual Meeting of the Victoria institute, in London, towards the end of June, Sir H. Barkly, G.C.M.G., F.R.S., occupied the chair, and the audience, which included many members of both Houses of Parliament, filled every part of the large hail. Professor Stokes gave an important account of the progress of physical science during the past quarter of a centurj, and, reviewing the results, specially noted that as scientific truth developed, so had men to give up the idea that there was any opposition between the Book of Nature and the Book of Revelation. He said that for the last twenty years or so one of the most striking advances in science hid been made in the application of the spectroscope, and in the information obtained with regard to the constitution of the heavenly bodies. The discovery that there were in these particular chemical elements, which were also present in our earth, exalted our idea of the universality of the laws of NaturS. and there was nothing in that contrary to what he had learned in Revelation, unless we were to say as the heathen did that the God of the Hebrews was the God of the hills and not of the valleys. Entering with some par* ticularity into the composition of the sun, the Protcsso- said this gave an idea of an enormous temperature, since iron existed there in a state of vapor. This was utterly inconsistent with the possibilty of the existence thereof living beings at all approaching in character to those we have here. Are we then to regard this as a waste of materials ? Might we not rather aigue that as in animals we ascend by greater specialisation, so we could consider the differentiation of office in different members of the solar system as marks of superiority, and could regard th» sun as performing most important functions for that system? In f icfc, all life on our earth was ultimately derived from the radiation of solor heat. Referring to the doctrines of conservation of energy and of dissipation of energy, he pointed out at some length how the sun, so far as we could see, was not calculated for an eternal duration in the same state and performing the same functions as now. Wo must regard the Universe on a grand scale, and then there wiS progress. If we contemplated nothing hut periodicity, perhaps we might rest content and think things' would go on for ever as at presens ; but. 1 looking on the state of the Universe on a" grand scale as one of progress, this idea obliged us to refer to a First Cause. Professor Stok- s eouolu !e 1 with recommending that the' Annual Report of the Society, read by Captain Frank Petrie, the honorary secretary, be adopted. It showed that the number of home, American, aud Colo, nial members had increased to upwards of eleven hundred, and that the Institute's object, iu which scientific men whether in its ranks or not aided, was to promote scientific inquiry, and especially iu cases where questions of science were held by those who advance I them to be subversive of religion All its members and one guinea Associates, received its Transactions free, aud twelve of its papers were now published in a People’s Edition, which was to be had in many of the Colonies and America. The address was delivered by Dr J. Lcs'ie Porter, President of Queen’s College, Belfast, the subject being “ Egypt : Historical and Geographical,” a country with which ho had been thirty years intimately acquainted. Having referred to the antiquity of Egyptian records, which in so many instances bore on the history of other ancient countries, ho proceeded to describe the various changes through which that country had passed since its first colonisation ; and touching on its physical geography, concluded by giving the main results of recent exploration. Oae or two special statements may be here recorded. Dr Porter said : “ Were tbe Nile, by some convulsion of Nature, or by some gigantic work of engineering skill—neither of which is impossible,—turned out of its present channel away up to Khartoum, or at any other point above Wady Haifa, Egypt woul 1 speedily become a desert.” No tributary enters the Nile below Berber, that is to say, for the last thousand miles of its course. “The areahle land of Egvpt is about equal in extent to Yorkshire.” The White Nile, issuing from Lakes Albert and Victoria Nyauza, is broad and deep, never rises above a few feet, and supnlies the permanent source of the river of Egypt. “ The other tributaries produce the inundation.” Of these the Atbara from the mountains of A byssinia is the most fertilising, as it brings down with it a quantity of soil. The deposit of this soil is slowly raising the bed of the river as well as extending on each side ; for example, on the plain of Thebes the soil formed by deposits has in 35 0 years encroached upon the desert a third of a mile, “ while the ruins of Hierapoiie in the Delta, which once s f ool above reach of the inundation, are now buried in a mud deposit to a depth of nearly sev t u feet.” In conclusion, he referred to Egypt and its present condition, saying:—“ The commerce 'from the upper tributaries of the Nile, and from tho wide region of the Soudan, forms an essential factor in tho prosperity and progress of Bnypt.” The Earl of Belmore and the Right Hon. A. S. Ayrton moved and seconded a vote of thanks, after which tho company present assembled in the Musuem, where refreshments were served.