SCIENCE AND MODERN DISCOVERY.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1381, 20 August 1885, Page 3

SCIENCE AND MODERN DISCOVERY.

The present occupant of Sir Isaac Newton's Professional Chair at Cambridge University, Professor G. G. Stokes, F.R.S., who is also Secretary of the Royal Society of Engl mid, delivered a remarkable address at the annual meeting of the Victoiia Institute, in London, towards the end of June. Sir H. Barkly, G.C.M.G., F.P..5., occupied the chair, and the audience, which included many members of both Houses of Parliament, filled every part of the largu hall. Professor Stokes gave an important account of tlie progress of physical science during the past quarter of a century, 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 had 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 Nature, 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 of the hills and not of the valleys. Entering with some particularity into the composition of the sun, the Professor said this gave an idea of an enormous temperature, since iron existed there in a state of vapour. This was utterly inconsistent with the possibility of the existence there of living beings at all approaching in character to those we have here. Are we then to regard this as a waste of materials 1 Might we not rather argue that as in animals we ascend by greater specialisation, so we could consider the differentiation of office in different members of the solar system 1 In fact, all life on our earth was ultimately derived from the radiation of solar 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. We must regard the Universe on a grand scale, and then there was progress. If we contemplated nothing but periodicity, perhaps we might rest content and think things would go on for ever as at present; but, 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 Stokes concluded with recommending that the Annual Report of the Society, read by Captain Frank Petrie, the honorary secretary, be adopted. It showed that this number of Home, American, and Colonial members had increased to eleven hundred, and that the Institute's object, in which scientific r.-en whether in its ranks or not aided, was to promote scientific enquiry, and especially in cases where questions of science were held by those who advanced them to be subversive of religion. All its Members and one-guinea Associates received its Transactions free, and 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. Leslie Porter, President of Queen's College, Belfast, the subject being " Egypt : Historical and Geographical," a country with which he had been thirty years intimately acquainted. Having referred to the antiquity of Egyptian records, which in so many instances bore on the history ef other ancient countries, he proceeded to describe the various changes through which that country had passed since Tts first colonisation ; and, touching on its physical geography, concluded by giving the main results of recent expiration. One or two special statements may be here recorded. Dr. Porter said : " Were the Nile, by some convulsion of Nature, or by some gigantic work of engineering skill. —neither of which is impossible turned out ot its present chanuel away up at Khartoum, or at any other point above Wady Haifa, Egypt would speedily become a desert." No tributary enters the Nile below Berber, that is to say, for the last thousand miles of its course. " The arable land of Egypt is about equal in ex'ent to Yorkshire. ' The White Nile, issuing from lakes Albert and Victoria Nyanai, is broad and deep, never rises above a few feet, and supplies the permanent source of the river of Egypt. " The other tributaries produce the inundation." Of these the Atbarj, from the mountains of Abyssinia is the most fertilising, as it bringß 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 3,500 years encroached upon the desert a third of a mile, " while the ruins of Hierapolis in the Delta, which once stood above reach of the inundation, are now buried in mud deposit to a depth of nearly 7ft." In conclusion, he referred to Egypt and its present condition, saying:-" The commerce from the upper tributaries of the Nile, and from the wide region of the Soudiin, forms an essential factor in the prosperity mid progress of Egypt." The Earl of Be'more and the Right Hon. A. S. Ayr ton moved and seconded a vote of thanks, after which the company present assembled in the Mm-enni, where refreshments were served.