6 NOTES BY THE EDITOE 



For the present year Dr. Daubeny was elected President, and Chel- 

 tenham appointed as the place of meeting. From the annual address 

 hy the President we derive the following memoranda. Alluding to 

 the great telescope of Lord Rosse, he says : " Its systematic operations 

 may be said to be still only in the first stages of their progress ; yet 

 already how often do we see reference had to the mysterious revela- 

 tions it has made, in discussions on the principles of that science, 

 and in not a few of the speculations to which they are giving birth ! 

 Sir David Brewster, in his recent Life of Newton, has designated that 

 telescope as ' one of the most wonderful combinations of art and 

 science which the world has yet seen.' It must always be remem- 

 bered, however, that astronomy is a science of which hitherto at 

 least it might almost be said that one great genius had left us no more 

 worlds to conquer ; that is to say, he carried our knowledge at a bound 

 to one grand, and apparently universal law, to which all worlds were 

 subject, and of which every new discovery has been but an additional 

 illustration. The reign of that law, whether universal or not, was at 

 least so wide that we had never pierced beyond the boundary of its 

 vast domain. For the first time since the days of Newton a suspicion 

 has arisen in the minds of astronomers that we have passed into the 

 reign of other laws, and that the nebular phenomena revealed to us 

 by Lord Rosse's telescope must be governed by forces different from 

 those of which we have any knowledge. "Whether this opinion be or 

 be not well founded whether it be or be not probable that our limited 

 command over time and space can ever yield to our research any 

 other law of interest or importance comparable with that which has 

 already been determined still, inside that vast horizon there are 

 fillings-in and filliugs-up which will ever furnish infinite reward to 

 labor. 



" Of all the sciences, Chemistry is that which least requires to have 

 its triumphs recorded here. The immediate applicability of so many 

 of its results to the useful arts has secured for it the watchful interest 

 of the world; and every day is adding some new proof of its inex- 

 haustible fertility. It was to the British Association at Glasgow, in 

 1840, that Baron Liebig first communicated his work on the Applica- 

 tion of Chemistry to Vegetable Physiology. The philosophical ex- 

 planation there given of the principles of manuring and cropping gave 

 an immediate impulse to agriculture, and directed attention to the 

 manures which are valuable for their ammonia and mineral ingre- 

 dients; and especially to guano, of which, in 1840, only a few speci- 

 mens had appeared in Great Britain. The consequence was, that in 

 the next year (1841), no less than 2,881 tons were imported; and 

 during the succeeding years the total quantity imported into Great 

 Britain lias exceeded Ihe enormous amount of 1,500,000 tons. TNOS* 



