Different papyri having exhibited different appearances, he concluded that the same process would not apply in all cases; but even a partial success he considered as a step gained, and it served to increase his anxiety to examine in detail the numerous specimens preserved in the Museum at Naples, as well as to visit the excavations that still remained open at Herculaneum. Mr. Hamilton, to whom these views were communicated, with that ardour which belongs to his character, entered warmly into a plan which might enable Sir Humphry Davy to accomplish his objects; and on his representation of them, the Earl of Liverpool and Viscount Castlereagh placed at his disposal such funds as were requisite for paying the persons whom it was necessary to engage in the process. At the same time, Sir Humphry Davy had the honour of an audience of his late Majesty, then Prince Regent; and on witnessing the results, his Royal Highness was pleased to express his approbation, and graciously condescended to patronize the undertaking. Exulting in the prospect of success, and sanguine as to the importance of its results to literature, Davy embarked at Dover for the Continent, in order to proceed to Naples, on the 26th of May 1818. During his journey, he was engaged in making observations on the comparative temperature of air incumbent upon land and water, with a view to account for the formation of mists over the beds of rivers and lakes. The results of this enquiry were embodied in a memoir, which was read before the Royal Society on the 25th of February 1819, and published in the Philosophical Transactions of that year. This paper, while it records the course of his observations, informs us of the direction of his route to the southern shores of Italy. On the 31st of May, while passing along the Rhine from Cologne to Coblentz, we find him examining the relative temperature of the air, and of the water of that river. On the 9th, 10th, and 11th of June, he was making similar observations on the Danube, during a voyage from Ratisbonne to Vienna. On the 11th of July, he was similarly engaged on the Raab, near Kermond in Hungary. In the end of August he was on the Save in Carniola; in the middle of September on the Ironzo in the Friul; in the end of that month, on the Po, near Ferrara; and in the beginning of October, repeatedly on the Tiber, and on the small lakes in the Campagna of Rome, extending and multiplying his observations upon the formation of mists: from the results of which he established the law, that the formation of mist, on a river or lake, never takes place, if the temperature of the water be lower than that of the atmosphere; not even though the latter should be even saturated with vapour.