OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY: OR, YEAR-BOOK OF FACTS IN SCIENCE AND ART FOR 1864. EXHIBITING THE MOST IMPORTANT DISCOVERIES AND IMPROVEMENTS IN MECHANICS, USEFUL ARTS, NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, CHEMISTRY, TOGETHER WITH NOTES ON THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE DURING THE YEAR 1863; A LIST EDITED BY DAVID A. WELLS, A. M., M. D., AUTHOR OF PRINCIPLES OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, PRINCIPLES OF CHEMISTRY, BOSTON: GOULD AND LINCOLN, 59 WASHINGTON STREET. NEW YORK: SHELDON AND COMPANY. LONDON: TRUBNER & CO. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by GOULD AND LINCOLN, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts. NOTES BY THE EDITOR ON THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE FOR THE YEAR 1863. THE thirty-third annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science was held at Newcastle-on-Tyne, Sir William Armstrong (the gun-maker) being in the chair. The meeting was above the average, as respects the numbers in attendance and the interest of the papers brought forward. Sir Charles Lyell was selected as the President for 1864. From the annual address of the President, reviewing the recent progress of Science, we make the following extracts. Referring to the district of Newcastle as the birth-place of Stephenson, and of locomotives and railways, he said, "The history of railways shows what grand results may have their origin in small beginnings. When coal was first conveyed in this neighborhood from the pit to the shippingplace on the Tyne, the pack-horse, carrying a burden of three hundred-weight, was the only mode of transport employed. As soon as roads suitable for wheeled carriages were formed, carts were introduced, and this first step in mechanical appliance to facilitate transport had the effect of increasing the load which the horse was enabled to carry, from three hundred-weight to seventeen hundred-weight. The next improvement consisted in laying wooden bars or rails for the wheels of carts to run upon, and this was followed by the substitution of the fourwheeled wagon for the two-wheeled cart. By this further application of mechanical principles the original horse-load of three hundred-weight was augmented to forty-two hundred-weight. These were important results, and they were not obtained without the shipwreck of the fortunes of some men whose ideas were in advance of the times in which they lived. The next step in the progress of railways was the attachment of slips of iron to the wooden rails. Then came the iron tramway, consisting of cast-iron bars of an angular section; in this arrangement, |