I32L] Royal Society, ^,^,^^ 145 



Sir H. Davy then proceeded to point out the difficulties which 

 attended the pursuits of philosophers at an early period, and 

 hence existed the necessity of placing in the rooms of the Royal 

 Society a collection of such machines as were useful in the pro- 

 gress of experimental knowledge. From the improvements 

 which had been made in mechanical and chemical arts, he 

 observed there were now but few occasions in which individuals 

 could not conduct their experiments in their own laboratories ; 

 he expressed a hope, however, that on occasions of importance, 

 and which might incur great expense, the proposers would not 

 fail to recur to the Society. 



The President then observed, that, owing to the progress of 

 science, various associations had been formed for its advance- 

 ment since the period when the Royal Society stood alone, and 

 he expressed a hope that it would always preserve the most 

 amicable relations with these new Societies ; and that when any 

 new facts of importance were observed by them, they would not 

 fail to communicate them to the Royal, as the parent Society, 

 whose records, he observed, contain all that was valuable 

 from the time of our early philosophers. He disclaimed, how- 

 ever, all wish on the part of the Royal Society to exercise any 

 authority over the more recent associations, whose objects 

 were similar. 



After some further remarks on the inexhaustibility of the sub- 

 jects of scientific pursuit, he observed that philosophers, like the 

 early cultivators in a great new continent, in proportion as they 

 clear the country, discover more and more the vastness of the 

 smTOunding wilds. As the chart of a new country is essential in 

 guiding the traveller, so, he continued, might the aspects and 

 'Characters of new objects be useful to scientific investigation ; 

 and with this view the President offered some observations 

 respecting those difficult departments of inquiry which appeared 

 most capable of improvement. The pure mathematics, as a work 

 of intellectual combination, are, he conceived, incapable of receiv- 

 ing aid from external phenomena ; he considered them, how- 

 ever, at the present moment as promising new applications, 

 observing that many departments of philosophical inquiry, to 

 which the mathematics were formerly inapphcable, are now 

 l)rought under its dominion. 



After the discovery of the Georgium Sidus there appeared but 

 little probability that new planetary bodies should be discovered 

 Bearer to our earth than any of those already known ; yet this 

 supposition, the President observed, had been found erroneous, 

 owing to our limited conceptions of nature. The discovery of 

 bodies smaller than satellites, but having the motions of primary 

 planets, has opened new views of the arrangement of the solar 

 ^system. 



Sir H. Davy then, alluding to astronomy, as the most ancient 



fiew Series y vol. i. k 



