the whole of Egypt and the pyramids of Gizeh." Here upon one is seen the cartouche of Suphis, king of Memphis, and it is identical with that in the Great Pyramid which was built by him. This king is related to have conquered this portion of the Peninsula, which was about the time of Abraham.

The chief people now inhabiting this country are the Bedawyun or Bedouin Arabs, whose entire population Burckhardt estimated, some years ago, at about four thousand souls; and I apprehend, that little or no increase has taken place in their numbers since that traveller visited them.

Notwithstanding that of late years the Sinaic Peninsula has become better known to us from the reports of its recent travellers, yet there remains much to be more perfectly investigated in it so likewise with regard to its adjoining countries, and of these none requires more examination than the north of Arabia Proper. I can therefore only express an ardent wish that a party of English scientific men, geologists and naturalists, would undertake the exploration of it; for I am satisfied that great benefits would accrue to science from their researches, and that they would obtain for themselves much lasting honour from such an investigation.

Finally, in composing this hasty account of a portion of Arabia and Egypt, but little known to us in a scientific view, I have principally made use of the accurate works of Burckhardt, Robinson, Wellsted, Lepsius, Newbold, J. Wilkinson, and Russegger-all able travellers, who have personally visited the countries here attempted to be described.

PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT EDINBURGH, IN JULY AND AUGUST 1850.

OFFICERS FOR 1850.

President.-SIR DAVID BREWSTER, K.H., D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S., V.P.R.S. E., Principal of the United College of St Salvador and St Leonard, St Andrews.

Vice-Presidents.—THE RIGHT HON. THE LORD PROVOST OF EDINBURGH; THE EARL OF CATHCART, K.C.B., F.R.S.E.; THE EARL OF ROSEBERY, K.T., D.C.L., F.R.S.; THE RIGHT HON. DAVID BOYLE, Lord Justice-General, F.R.S.E.; GENERAL SIR THOMAS M. BRISBANE, Bart., K.C.B., G.C.H., D.C.L., F.R.S., President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh; THE VERY REV. JOHN LEE, D.D., V.P.R.S.E., Principal of the University of Edinburgh; ROBERT JAMESON, F.R.SS.L. & E., &c., Regius Professor of Natural History in the University of Edinburgh; W. P. ALISON, M.D., V.P.R.S.E., Professor of the Practice of Physic in the University of Edinburgh; JAMES D. FORBES, F.R.S., Sec. R.S.E., Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh.

General Secretaries.-LIEUT.-COLONEL SABINE, F.R.S., Sec. R.S., Woolwich, PROFESSOR J. FORBES ROYLE, M.D., F.R.S., of King's College, London.

Assistant General Secretary.-JOHN PHILLIPS, Esq., F.R.S., York.

General Treasurer.-JOHN TAYLOR, Esq., F.R.S., 6 Queen Street Place, Upper Thames Street, London.

Local Secretaries.-THE REV. PHILIP KELLAND, M.A., F.R.SS.L. & E., Professor of Mathematics in the University of Edinburgh; JOHN H. BALFOUR, M.D., F.R.S.E., F.L.S., Professor of Botany in the University of Edinburgh; JAMES TOD, Esq., F.R.S.E., Secretary to the Royal Scottish Society of Arts.

Treasurer for the Meeting.-WILLIAM BRAND, Esq.

THE GENERAL MEETING,

Wednesday, 31st July,

IN THE MUSIC HALL-EVENING.

The meeting was opened at eight o'clock in the evening, by the President of the former year. The Rev. Dr Robinson of Armagh, on retiring from the office of President of the Association, on this occasion, said

"The time has come, when, by our rules, I must lay down the authority which last year you honoured me with. I trust

that, from the way in which I have employed it, I have not altogether proved myself unworthy of the confidence which you then reposed in me. I have at least this to boast ofwhich it is not every Sovereign who can congratulate himself upon at the close of his career-that I shall deliver to my successor my dominion in a more prosperous and in a more flourishing state than I received it. But more: I have this additional consolation, in entering again among your ranks, that at least I shall not be visited by the affliction which pressed so heavily upon the mind of Solomon, that when he had laboured in the pursuit of wisdom and in the advancement of knowledge, he should leave his portion to one who had not laboured therein; for I deliver my authority to one, in comparison of whose achievements, whatever I myself may, by the partiality of my friends, be supposed to have effected, fades into nothing. There is not a spot in the world to which the light of physical investigation has pierced, where his name has not become known. There has been no period in the course of this Association, prosperous and successful as it has been from its origin, in which we have not been enlightened by his discoveries and aided by his counsel. There is not a department in that multifarious lore with which we have employed ourselves, on which he has not, in the course of his investigations, thrown a brilliant light; and what I prize beyond all that he has achieved-as the distinction or the fame of the whole of that career, which has been so brilliant, is, that there has not been any stain or any cloud to obscure the moral purity, the religious veneration, the upright and conscientious spirit, which, more than all knowledge, and more than all genius, is the noblest prerogative of man. When I resign my throne of office to Sir David Brewster, I know that that act is perhaps the greatest service which, in the course of my connection with the Association, I have ever rendered to it."

Dr Robinson then moved that, in accordance with the resolution of the General Committee of last year at Birmingham, Sir David Brewster do take the chair. Sir David Brewster having taken the chair, addressed the audience nearly in the following terms :

"The kind and flattering expressions with which Dr Robinson has been pleased to introduce me to this chair, and to characterise my scientific labours, however coloured they are by the warmth of friendship, cannot but be gratifying even at a time when praise ceases to administer to vanity or to stimulate ambition. The appreciation of intellectual labour by those who have laboured intellectually, if not its highest, is at least one of its high rewards. When I consider the mental power of my distinguished friend, the value of his original researches, the vast extent of his acquirements, and the eloquence which has so often instructed and delighted us at our annual reunions, I feel how unfit I am to occupy his place, and how little I am qualified to discharge many of those duties which are incident to the chair of this Association. It is some satisfaction, however, that you are all aware of the extent of my incapacity, and that you have been pleased to accept of that which I can both promise and perform-to occupy any post of labour, either at the impelling or the working arm of this gigantic lever of science. It has been the custom of some of my predecessors in this chair, to give a brief account of the progress of the sciences during the preceding year; but however interesting such a narrative might be, it would be beyond the power of any individual to do justice to so extensive a theme, even if your time would permit, and your patience endure it. I shall make no apology, however, for calling your attention to a few of those topics, within my own narrow sphere of study, which, from their prominence and general interest, may be entitled to your attention. I begin with astronomy, a study which has made great progress under the patronage of this Association; a subject, too, possessing a charm above all other subjects, and more connected than any with the deepest interests, past, present, and to come, of every rational being. It is upon a planet that we live and breathe. Its surface is the arena of our contentions, our pleasures, and our sorrows. It is to obtain a portion of its alluvial crust that man wastes the flower of his days, and prostrates the energies of his mind, and risks the happiness of his soul; and it is over, or beneath, its verdant turf that his ashes are to be scattered, or his bones to be laid. It is from the interior, too-from the inner

life of the earth, that man derives the materials of civilization-his coal, his iron, and his gold. And deeper still, as geologists have proved-and none with more power than the geologists around me-we find in the bosom of the earth, written on blocks of marble-the history of primæval times, of worlds of life created, and worlds of life destroyed. We find there in hieroglyphics as intelligible as those which Major Rawlinson has deciphered on the slabs of Nineveh, the remains of forests which waved in luxuriance over its plains; the very bones of huge reptiles that took shelter under their foliage, and of gigantic quadrupeds that trod uncontrolled its plains-the lawgivers and the executioners of that mysterious community with which it pleased the Almighty to people his infant world. But though man is but a recent occupant of the earth-an upstart in the vast chronology of animal life, his interest in the Paradise so carefully prepared for him is not the less exciting and profound. For him it was made; he was to be the lord of the new creation, and to him it especially belongs to investigate the wonders it displays, and to learn the lesson which it reads. But while our interests are thus closely connected with the surface, and the interior of the earth, interests of a higher kind are associated with it as a body of the solar system to which we belong. The object of geology is to unfold the history and explain the structure of a planet: and that history and that structure may, within certain limits, be the history and the structure of all the other planets of the systemperhaps of all the other planets of the universe. The laws of matter must be the same, wherever matter is found. The heat which warms our globe, radiates upon the most distant of the planets; and the light which twinkles in the remotest star, is in its physical, and doubtless in its chemical, properties, the same that cheers and enlivens our own system; and if men of ordinary capacity possessed that knowledge which is within their reach, and had that faith in science which its truths inspire, they would see in every planet around them, and in every star above them, the home of immortal natures of beings that suffer and of beings that rejoice-of souls that are saved and of souls that are lost. Geology is, therefore, the first chapter of astronomy. It describes that por