ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



MECHANICS AND USEFUL AETS. 



THE KECEXT PKOGEESS OF SCIENCE. 



AT the meeting of the British Association, at Cheltenham, for 1856, the 

 President, Dr. Daubeny, presented, as the subject of his annual address, the 

 following retrospective view of the recent progress of Natural Science. 



CHEMICAL PROGRESS. 



Beginning then with Chemistry, let me remind you that at a period not 

 remote, all of it that could be quoted as really worthy the name of a science 

 was comprehended within the limits of the mineral kingdom. Here at least 

 the outline had been traced out with sufficient precision the general laws 

 established on a firm basis the nomenclature framed with logical exactness 

 the facts consistent with each other, and presented in a scientific and luminous 

 form. Thus a philosopher, like Sir Humphrey Davy, who had contributed hi 

 so eminent a degree to bring the science into this satisfactory condition, 

 might, at the close of his career, have despaired of adding anything worthy of 

 his name to the domain of chemistry, and have sighed for other worlds to 

 subdue. But there was a world almost as little known to the chemists of that 

 period as was the Western Hemisphere to the Macedonian Conqueror a 

 world comprising an infinite variety of important products, called into exist- 

 ence by the mysterious operation of the vital principle, and therefore placed, 

 as was imagined, almost beyond the reach of experimental research. This is 

 the new World of Chemistry, which the Continental philosophers hi the first 

 instance, and subsequently those of our own country, have during the last 

 twenty years been busy in exploring, and by so doing have not only bridged 

 over the gulf which had before separated, by an impassable barrier, the king- 

 doms of inorganic and of organic nature, but also have added provinces as 



