the Society can best forward his wishes. On Mr Landale's important communication I regret that, for the reasons given in the Report, the Prize Committee have not been able to make immediate award. The delay which has been requested will doubtless permit justice to be fully done.

Turning from these proofs of activity on the part of our living members, I have to announce the decease, during last year, of seven fellows of this Society, namely, Wm. Bowie, Esq.; Wm. Craufurd, Esq. of Carterburn; Chas. Cunningham, Esq., W.S.; Robert Davidson, Esq., Ravelrig, Advocate; John Henderson, C.E., Leeds; John Clerk Maxwell, Esq., of Middlebie ; and James Spence, Esq., W.S. We have also lost an associate, the Rev. Dr Andrew Mylne of Dollar.

Mr Craufurd, I understand, took a deep interest in the affairs of the Society. He was V.P. in 1829-30. Mr Clerk Maxwell, who filled the same office in 1830-31, must have been known to most present as one of the most hearty and enlightened friends of the Society. It is a consolation to us to know that he has left in his gifted and distinguished son, Professor James Clerk Maxwell, one who has already made important communications to this Society, and is likely to make many more.

The loss of the seven ordinary fellows named above, coupled with the resignation of eight, lessens the names on our roll by fifteen, whilst we added to our list last year fourteen; so that our numbers have decreased during that period by one, an unsatisfactory state of matters, to which I shall presently return.

Suffer me, however, for a brief space to pass beyond the mere circle of this Society to refer to matters transacted beyond our sphere, but of interest to us. 1. Public attention has been largely directed in London to the propriety of Government furnishing the Scientific Societies with apartments at the public charge, and allowing them to draw upon the Treasury to some extent for their other expenses. It is felt by many, moreover, that what is suitable for London in this matter, would not be unsuitable for Edinburgh, and that the success which has attended the application of certain of the metropolitan bodies for free apartments and money-grants, might

be followed by a similar success here, were the Societies of this city to petition Government as those in London have done.

Now, assuming what no one will question, that Government might legitimately expend public money on a Society Hall, and might endow, more or less amply, Societies working for the public good, still I think it an essential question, "Would a Society, in the end, be a gainer by such grants?"

Seeking only to give utterance to an individual opinion, I would remind you that all our active Societies are largely selfsupporting. Our Continental brethren work none the worse in their Societies that they are salaried, provided for, and unremittingly nursed by government. But in this country we do not seem to thrive on such a regimen. Some of our endowed. Societies are at a loss what to do with their government grants. Too honest to waste them, and not sufficiently numerous or active to spend them legitimately, they simply hoard them. Others have been tempted by their certain income to give high salaries to office-bearers, and, in process of time, the offices have been coveted and attained by merely needy or greedy men. The private business of the Society has taken up much more time than the public, and before long the council has become a mere Board of Green Cloth, practised in all the ways of the Circumlocution Office. I do not mean by this to imply that a Society should not be liberal to its officebearers; or that we are entitled to expect that men like our indefatigable Secretary, willing to give important services for nothing, or as good as nothing, should often be found. Such labourers will always be rare, and always worthy of their hire. The largest sum we could give our Secretary, would still amount only to a quiddam honorarium. All that I desire is, that the subscriptions of the members of the Society, not a Government grant, should be the source of such salaries as it gives. Inefficient salaried officers can never remain long in a Society which furnishes, as well as votes, the supplies; but where Government provides the salaries it must often be otherwise. For my own part, accordingly, whilst I should greatly rejoice if Government gave us, along with other Societies, a Free Hall and subsidiary rooms for our committees, Library, and Museum, and should welcome a Treasury grant

to be expended in prizes, or still better, in defraying the cost of important researches; I should prefer that such privileges were given only on condition that the Society devoted a sum, more or less equal to that furnished by Government, to its own maintenance, and especially to the publication in full of its proceedings. I have referred to this matter, not because I have any reason to imagine that Government are solicitous to press money upon us, but because this Society may, before long, be requested by other Societies to join in memorialising Government for a grant; and we should be careful as to the terms on which, if invited to do so, we become Treasury pensioners, lest we sacrifice the vigour and vitality which have hitherto attended our poverty and independence. Without invidious comment on any of the Societies of the country, it may confidently be affirmed, that the best endowed are not in every case the most active and useful; and, on the other hand, that no Society has deserved better of the country than our sister Society of Arts in London, which looks only to its members for support.

2. Another subject which has occupied much public attention during last year, is the adulteration of articles of commerce, which so discreditably characterizes too many manufacturers and dealers. It is a matter peculiarly concerning a Society like ours, which has for one of its self-imposed duties that of a vigilance committee, watching over the public interests; and although we have heard chiefly of adulterations of food, drink, and drugs, with which we do not as a Society specially concern ourselves, this has only arisen from the recent exposure of adulterations having been prosecuted by medical men, to whom the purity of the articles named above is a matter of peculiar interest. It does not, unfortunately, admit of doubt, that were the inquiry formally extended to other substances than food and medicine, the result would in too many cases be equally discreditable. At the same time, I feel assured that the majority of our large manufacturers and dealers are men of honour and integrity; and also, that with the best intentions, and in many cases undesignedly, there has been. much exaggeration regarding the adulteration of food. More than one middle-aged Englishman has read in grave docu

ments, that the bread which he had been eating for forty years, believing it to be made of flour, consisted in large part of stucco and alum; that his tea was flavoured with prussic acid, his cream a preparation of chalk, his vinegar diluted oil of vitriol, his cayenne pepper, in large part, red lead, his beer a decoction of cocculus indicus and quassia with a suspicion of strychnia, and his port-wine a solution of sugar of lead in tincture of logwood. The list is appalling enough, but when the reader recalls the few fees the doctors have obtained from him, and realizes how excellent his health is, he cannot but puzzle between the alternatives, each equally consoling, that matters cannot be so bad as they are affirmed to be, or else that stucco, alum, prussic acid, cocculus indicus, and sugar of lead, are as wholesome articles of diet as flour or milk, and that we cannot put too wide an interpretation on the truth, that “man shall not live by bread alone." The recent outcry about adulteration, indeed, has made some persons afraid to eat anything, and others resolved to eat everything.

But after making all deductions from the statements which have alarmed the public, there is no room to doubt that the health, character, and credit of the nation are every day more or less jeopardied by impure or false goods and wares. Now, as the Scottish Society of Arts, we cannot look on such a state of matters with complacency. We cannot, perhaps, as a Society, interfere to purpose; but I avail myself of this opportunity to suggest a mode of diminishing adulterations.

The favourite mode of checking adulterations with many is the appointment of inspectors and official analysts. I confess, I look with little favour on such a scheme. We may be driven to adopt it; but it should be our last resource. It would be very costly. It would not suit the temper of the country, and I doubt whether it would attain the end at which it aimed. Appoint an official to discover adulterations, and presently you find that, in his estimation, nothing is pure. You tempt him to make impurities where there are none; and if once he pronounce an article adulterated, he will not confess himself mistaken, whatever proof you bring to the contrary. On the other hand, a continual, and unavoidably annoying series of inquisitorial visits to manufactories and workshops would blunt the moral sense

of those who were thus annoyed, to the wrong involved in adulteration. Every honest man knows that the falsification of materials is a sin against God, as well as a crime against man. But proclaim by the appointment of an army of spies, that you put faith in the fair-dealing of no one, and say, as it were, to the manufacturing community," Adulterate if you dare," and they will practically reply, "Find us out if you can." Adulteration will come to be regarded like smuggling, as a justifiable struggle against a conventional law; or, at least, like theft with the Spartans, as a crime only if discovered.

It seems to me, that without adopting a method of prevention, so liable to demoralize both the inspector and the inspected, much may be done towards the abatement of adulteration of many articles, by the extension of two principles long recognised in different callings: the one Sale by Sample; the other, Manufacture by published recipe.

Sale by sample is best exemplified by the practice of the agriculturist, who, however far he may be behind the members of other professions in some things, is far before them in his methods of protecting himself against adulterations. He buys his grain by sample, a mode of securing genuineness only applicable of course to some things. He does not buy a horse unless it be warranted, i.e., subjected to what I may call a medical analysis, which pronounces it altogether sound, or states wherein and to what extent it is unsound. He does not buy guano, or any other similar manure, unless furnished by the seller with a chemical analysis of its composition, which is at the same time an index of its money value. Now, why might not this principle be carried out to other things than horses and manures? There are manufacturers in the country not a few whose names are warranty and analysis sufficient for all they produce; but these men would be the last to object to giving a more formal assurance of purity of goods as a security against being identified with men of less principle. The cost of an analysis, whether chemical, or microscopic, or both, or different from either, would be a mere trifle if conducted by the manufacturer, so as to apply to a large amount of manufactured product. A single chemical analysis suffices for tons of guano, often for a whole