36 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



might have been the case at the period alluded to. The Ipswich Museum has 

 set an example, which I have no doubt will be generally followed, of selecting 

 for such Institutions a series of types illustrative of the mineral, vegetable, 

 and animal kingdoms ; and a Committee of this Association is now employed in 

 the useful undertaking of preparing a list of objects best adapted to this purpose. 



It begins, indeed, to be generally felt, that amongst the faculties of mind, 

 upon the development of which in youth success in after life mainly depends, 

 there are some which are best improved through the cultivation of the Physical 

 Sciences, and that the rudiments of those Sciences are most easily acquired 

 at an early period of life. That power of minute observation those habits 

 of method and arrangement that aptitude for patient and laborious inquiry 

 that tact and sagacity in deducing inferences from evidence short of demon- 

 stration, which the Natural Sciences more particularly promote, are the fruits 

 of early education, and acquired with difficulty at a later period. It is during 

 childhood, also, that the memory is most fresh and retentive ; and that the 

 nomenclature of the sciences, which, from its crabbedness and technicality, 

 often repels us at a more advanced age, is acquired almost without an effort. 

 Although, therefore, it can hardly be expected, that the great schools in the 

 country will assign to the Natural Sciences any important place in their 

 systems of instruction, until the Universities for which they are the seminaries 

 set them the example, yet I cannot doubt, but that the signal once given, both 

 masters and scholars will eagerly embrace a change so congenial to the tastes 

 of youth, and so favorable to the development of their intellectual faculties. 

 And has not, it may be. asked, the signal been given by the admission of the 

 Physical Sciences into the curriculum of our academical education ? I trust 

 the question may be answered in the affirmative, if we are entitled to assume, 

 that the recognition of them which has alreadjr taken place will be consistently 

 followed up, by according to them some such substantial encouragement, 

 as that which has been afforded hitherto almost exclusively to classical 

 literature. 



At any rate, I trust the time has now passed away, when studies such as 

 those we recommend lie under the imputation of fostering sentiments inimi- 

 cal to religion. In countries, and in an age in which men of letters were 

 generally tinctured with infidelity, it is not to be supposed that natural 

 philosophy would altogether escape the contagion ; but the contemplation of 

 the works of creation is surely in itself far more calculated to induce the 

 humility that paves the way to belief, than the presumption which disdains 

 to lean upon the supernatural. 



When indeed we reflect within what a narrow area our researches are of 

 necessity circumscribed when we perceive that we are bounded in space 

 almost to the surface of the planet in wliich we reside itself merely a speck hi 

 the universe, one of innumerable worlds invisible from the nearest of the fixed 

 stars when we recollect, too, that we are limited in point of time to a few 

 short years of life and activity that our records of the past history of the 

 globe and of its inhabitants are comprised within a minute portion of the 

 latest of the many epochs which the earth has gone through and that with 

 regard to the future, the most durable monuments we can raise to hand down 



