Page:Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Vol 4.djvu/154

Rh any motion in the interior fluid, in which the rotatory motion causing precession and nutation is produced indirectly by the effect of the same forces on the position of the solid shell. A modification is thus produced in the effects of the centrifugal force, which exactly com- pensates for the want of any direct effect from the action of the dis- turbing forces; a compensation which the author considers as scarcely less curious than many others already recognized in the solar system, and by which, amidst many conflicting causes, its harmony and per- manence are so beautifully and wonderfully preserved.

The solution of the problem obtained by the author destroys the force of an argument, which might have been urged against the hy- pothesis of central fluidity, founded on the presumed improbability of our being able to account for the phenomena of precession and nutation on this hypothesis, as satisfactorily as on that of internal solidity. The object, however, of physical researches of this kind is not merely to determine the actual state of the globe, but also to trace its past history through that succession of ages, in which the matter composing it has probably passed gradually through all the stages between a simple elementary state and that in which it has become adapted to the habitation of man. In this point of view the author conceives the problem he proposes is not without value, as demonstrating an important fact in the history of the earth, pre- suming its solidification to have begun at the surface ; namely, the permanence of the inclination of its axis of rotation, from the epoch of the first formation of an exterior crust. This permanence has frequently been insisted on, and is highly important as connected with the speculations of the author on the causes of that change of temperature which has probably taken place in the higher latitudes : all previous proofs of this fact having rested on the assumption of the earth's entire solidity ; an assumption which, whatever may be the actual state of our planet, can never be admitted as applicable to it at all past epochs of time, at which it may have been the habi- tation of animate beings.

The author concludes, by expressing a hope that he may be enabled to prosecute the inquiry still further, and to bring before the Royal Society, at a future time, the matured results of his speculations.

G. W. Featherstonhaugh, Esq., who at the last Anniversary had ceased to be a Fellow from the non-payment of his annual contribu- tion, was, at this Meeting, re-admitted by ballot into the Society, agreeably to the provision of the Statutes.

Clement Tudway Swanston, Esq., was balloted for, and duly elected into the Society.

A paper was read, entitled, " An Experimental Inquiry into the