MEAN RESULTS OF METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS AT HAMILTON, C. W., FOR THE YEAR 1856.

REGISTER, THERMOMETER, BAROMETER. &c.; HAMILTON, 1856.

VERSITY OF

OF THE

THE CANADIAN JOURNAL.

MICHIGA

NEW SERIES.

No. VIII.-MARCH, 1857.

THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS.

BY THE HON. CHIEF JUSTICE DRAPER, C. B.

Read before the Canadian Institute, January 10th, 1857.

My first duty in assuming the Chair of the Canadian Institute, is to thank you for the honour you have done me in electing me to fill a position which has been previously occupied by men justly distinguished, and with such special claims to the honour. Without assuming a forced humility, or that tone of self-depreciation which is ever akin to vanity, I cannot but recognize my own deficiencies, and wish myself better qualified for the duties I ought to discharge. If I have felt hesitation in undertaking these duties, it is from no want of regard for the Canadian Institute, or of desire for its welfare; still less is it from undervaluing those who have assigned to me so conspicuous a place in a body associated together for objects at once so honorable, and so indispensable to the highest interests of this Province. But in accepting the office of President I comfort myself with the assurance that I am surrounded, in the Council, by those selected by you, and well qualified to relieve me of the grave responsibilities which the high aims of this Institute would otherwise impose on me; while I can only assure you that I yield to no member of this Society in earnest zeal for the promotion of its best interests, or in the high estimate of what it is capable of accomplishing for Canada.

VOL. II.-F

The Report of the Council for the year 1856, of the proceedings of the Institute, affords much reason for congratulation. The additions to the number of its members show the increasing sense of the value of the Institute; and this conclusion is strengthened by the observation in the report, that these additions are such as give it “ Provincial rather than a local character," and entitle us to hope for a far more widely extended co-operation than we at first might have reasonably expected. In no respect, perhaps, can that co-operation be more usefully afforded than in communications on the various branches of literature, science, and art, which, read at the meetings of the Institute, may, whenever their novelty or importance justifies it, form part of the published records of our proceedings, in the Canadian Journal. Observation and experience are the sources for enlarging the extent of all our knowledge. The communication of individual observation and experience not only adds to the general mass of what is known, but it furnishes help to the attainment of further knowledge. Every phenomenon, whether the result of physical experiment, or of that class which occur independently of human agency, when properly observed and noted, promotes the knowledge of causes, and aids in the deduction of general laws. I cannot doubt that, among the members of the Institute, there are many capable of responding to the invitation of the Council in this respect, and where the capacity exists I feel less doubt that there will be a readiness shown to co-operate with those who have so strenuously laboured for our advantage, and who devote so much of their time and talents to our service. In no way can a sense of obligation to the Council of the Institute generally, or to the Editing Committee of the Canadian Journal in particular, be more fitly shown than in an endeavour to share in their labours, and to promote the objects to which they are devoted. In so doing we are, in truth, serving ourselves. The influence of science extends alike to agriculture, to commerce, to manufactures, to the administration of justice, to each art of domestic life, and to the prosperity of the Province. The comfort and enjoyment of its inhabitants are dependent on those pursuits. Every advance made in the one is of necessity a corresponding benefit to the other. The time is quickly passing by-in some parts of the Province it has already passedwhen all the farmer has to do, after exhausting one portion of his. land, is, to leave it to waste, and to clear another. Such a process

must very soon bring itself to an end; and those whose whole knowledge of farming has been obtained under such training stand more

in need of guidance than the agriculturists of other countries where more advanced systems of husbandry are in vogue, even though their systems have little pretence to a scientific foundation. But now, when the necessity and value of a different mode of farming are fully felt and acknowledged, science has come to the aid of agriculture; and principles, developed and made manifest by chemical research, have been brought within the husbandman's reach.

The knowledge of what food plants require in order to attain the fullest maturity, and consequently what manures are best fitted to an exhausted soil, or to a soil incapable in its natural composition of affording that nutriment, is one of those benefits which agriculture owes to purely scientific research, and which makes the name of Liebig a household word with every farmer capable of appreciating. the advantages so derived.

I am more at home in referring to the acknowledgments which are due for the assistance rendered by physical science and observation in Judicial investigations. The past year has afforded one very remarkable instance of its invaluable service in bringing to justice a criminal, whose slow but surely fatal operations on his victim's life would never have been demonstrated but for the aid of chemical analysis. There was a Nemesis in this. The murderer, who availed himself of the discoveries of chemistry-subtilely, and as he hoped so. as to defy detection-to inflict death, was discovered and subjected to his well-deserved fate, through the instrumentality of that very branch of science which he had so grossly abused.

It concerns us all that physical science should unite with jurisprudence in increasing our protection against crime, by affording means, unthought-of before its aid was invoked, for the detection of the guilty. The number of criminals would be greatly reduced if there was an assured certainty that crime would be followed by detection, as well as detection by punishment. As one means of securing this I have observed the practice adopted in England, and I believe also in some other parts of Europe, of taking Photographic likenesses of persons charged with crime, and thus depriving them of the chances of escaping identification, which a change of name or of residence might afford. The A. B. of London criminal notoriety may be arrested in Liverpool and known there only as C. D.; all inquiries respecting him under the alias may be wholly unavailing, but the portrait transmitted from the police of the latter to that of the former city, removes the difficulty and puts the avenger of violated aw on the right track.

Still further: Judicial investigation into crime has been assisted by the microscope. It is stated as the result of the most careful and oft repeated examinations, that in every kind of animal the blood contains globules which constitute its colouring matter, differing in size from those of every other, and as a consequence that human blood can be distinguished accurately and certainly when examined through this instrument. By this mode a hiatus in evidence may be filled up, for the want of which a criminal might have escaped; or, on the other hand, circumstances apparently of great suspicion may be satisfactorily rebutted, and an unjustly accused individual may be saved.

I cannot refrain from recalling to you one among many instances of the discoveries of criminals effected through the aid of the microscope, in illustration of what I have said.

A box containing money had been stolen on one of the Railways in Prussia, and, after being emptied of its contents, was filled with sand and replaced on the car. The Police were at fault; the land round most of the stations in the north of Prussia is sandy, and the contents of the box seemed to afford them no clue to the place where the exchange had been made.

Professor Ehrenberg was applied to, and having procured samples of the sand along the line of the Railway, he, with the aid of the microscope, examined them, and also compared them with the sand in the box. The powerful instrument he used enabled him at once to discover the characteristic variations in the mineralogical composition and crystallization of the various specimens of disintegrated rock from the different localities. The station from whence the sand in the box had come was thus ascertained, and the conviction of the thief was the immediate consequence.

To the same professor is also due the application of the microscope for the detection of a singular literary forgery. A pretended palimpsest, purporting to be a history of some of the ancient Kings of Egypt, was submitted to him. It was clearly shown by the microscope that wherever the professedly ancient writing was crossed by that of more modern times, the ink of the old letters lay upon instead of under those of later date: precisely the reverse of what must have been the case had the palimpsest been genuine. The fraud was immediately and unanswerably exposed.

There are other topics which claim a passing attention. Among these: the proposition to establish a railway communication from Europe to India, intended for the transport of goods as well as of