66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



me in this chair, that it has not fallen to one of my eminent friends 

 around me to preside on this auspicious occasion. Conscious, how- 

 ever, as I am of my own deficiencies, I feel that I must not waste time 

 in dwelling on them, more especially as in doing so I should but give 

 them greater prominence. I will, therefore, only make one earnest 

 appeal to your kind indulgence. 



The connection of the British Association with the city of York 

 does not depend merely on the fact that our first meeting was held 

 here. It originated in a letter addressed by Sir D. Brewster to Pro- 

 fessor Phillips, as Secretary to your York Philosophical Society, by 

 whom the idea was warmly taken up. The first meeting was held on 

 September 26, 1831, the chair being taken by Lord Milton, who deliv- 

 ered an address, after which Mr. William Vernon Harcourt, chairman 

 of the Committee of Management, submitted to the meeting a code of 

 rules which had been so maturely considered and so wisely framed, 

 that they have remained substantially the same down to the present 

 day. The constitution and objects of the Association were so ably 

 described by Mr. Spottiswoode, at Dublin, and are so well known to 

 you, that I will not dwell on them this evening. The excellent Presi- 

 dent of the Royal Society, in the same address, suggested that the 

 past history of the Association would form an appropriate theme for 

 the present meeting. The history of the Association, however, is really 

 the history of science, and I long shrank from the attempt to give even 

 a panoramic survey of a subject so vast and so difficult ; nor should I 

 have ventured to make any such attempt, but that I knew I could rely 

 on the assistance of friends in every department of science. 



Certainly, however, this is an opportunity on which it may be well 

 for us to consider what have been the principal scientific results of the 

 last half -century, dwelling especially on those with which this Asso- 

 ciation is more directly concerned, either as being the work of our own 

 members or as having been made known at our meetings. It is, of 

 course, impossible within the limits of a single address to do more than 

 allude to a few of these, and that very briefly. In dealing with so 

 large a subject, I first hoped that I might take our annual volumes as 

 a text-book. This, however, I at once found to be quite impossible. 

 For instance, the first volume commences with a Report on Astronomy 

 by Sir G. Airy ; I may be pardoned, I trust, for expressing my pleas- 

 ure at finding that the second was one by my father, on the Tides, 

 prepared, like the preceding, at the request of the council ; then comes 

 one on Meteorology by Forbes ; Radiant Heat by Baden Powell ; Op- 

 tics by Brewster ; Mineralogy by Whewell, and so on. My best course 

 will therefore be to take our different sections one by one, and en- 

 deavor to bring before you a few of the principal results which have 

 been obtained in each department. 



The Biological Section is that with which I have been most int-i- 

 mately associated, and with which it is, perhaps, natural that I should 



