illustration was pointed out to me by M. Gazzeri, the Professor
of Chemistry at Florence. A few years ago an important suit in one of
the legal courts of Tuscany depended on ascertaining whether a certain
word had been erased by some chemical process from a deed then before
the court. The party who insisted that an erasure had been made, availed
themselves of the knowledge of M. Gazzeri, who, concluding that those
who committed the fraud would be satisfied by the disappearance of the
colouring matter of the ink, suspected (either from some colourless
matter remaining in the letters, or perhaps from the agency of the
solvent having weakened the fabric of the paper itself beneath the
supposed letters) that the effect of the slow application of heat would
be to render some difference of texture or of applied substance evident,
by some variety in the shade of colour which heat in such circumstances
might be expected to produce. Permission having been given to try the
experiment, on the application of heat the important word reappeared, to
the great satisfaction of the court.

CHAPTER VI. SUGGESTIONS FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE IN ENGLAND.

SECTION 1. OF THE NECESSITY THAT MEMBERS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY SHOULD
EXPRESS THEIR OPINIONS.

One of the causes which has contributed to the success of the PARTY, is
to be found in the great reluctance with which many of those whose names
added lustre to the Society expressed their opinions, and the little
firmness with which they maintained their objections. How many times
have those whose activity was additionally stimulated by their interest,
proposed measures which a few words might have checked; whilst the
names of those whose culpable silence thus permitted the project to be
matured, were immediately afterwards cited by their grateful coadjutors,
as having sanctioned that which in their hearts they knew to be a job.

Even in the few cases which have passed the limits of such forbearance,
when the subject has been debated in the Council, more than one, more
than two instances are known, where subsequent circumstances have
occurred, which proved, with the most irresistible moral evidence, that
members have spoken on one side of the question, and have voted on the
contrary.

This reluctance to oppose that which is disapproved, has been too
extensively and too fatally prevalent for the interests of the Royal
Society. It may partly be attributed to that reserved and reti