NOTES BY THE EDITOR 



ON THE 



PROGRESS OF SCIENCE FOR THE YEAR 1861. 



THE fifteenth meeting of the American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science was appointed to be held at Nashville, Tennessee, 

 April, 1861 ; but, owing to the breaking out of the civil war, the meet- 

 ing was necessarily postponed to some future and more auspicious 

 occasion. 



The thirty-first annual meeting of the British Association for the 

 Advancement of Science was held at Manchester, September, 1861, 

 Mr. William Fairbairn, the eminent engineer, being in the chair. 



This meeting appears to have exceeded all others before held, in 

 the numbers present, in the amount of general and local subscriptions 

 (upon which the efficiency of the Association in promoting investiga- 

 tions mainly depends), in the value and number of the papers read, 

 in the interest of the personal discussion, and in the excellence and 

 variety of the evening discourses. Among the lectures of special in- 

 terest was one by Professor Airy, the- Astronomer Royal, " On the 

 Solar Eclipse of 1860," and one by Prof. Miller, on the recent remark- 

 able researches of Bunsen and Kirchhoff on " Spectrum Analysis ; " 

 abstracts of both being given in this volume. The subjects which 

 commanded most general attention, however, among those brought 

 before the Association, were the " Origin and Antiquity of Man" and 

 "Iron-plated Ships." The next meeting was appointed to be held at 

 Cambridge, when the Prince of Wales is expected to take the chair. 



From the annual address of the President, which was mainly a 

 review of the recent progress of science, we make the following 

 extracts : 



" Were I to enlarge on the relation of the achievements of science 

 to the comforts and enjoyments of man, I should have to refer to the 

 present epoch as one of the most important in the history of the world. 

 At no former period did science contribute so much to the uses of life 

 and the wants of society. And in doing this it has only been fulfilling 



