The Presidents Address. 211 



** The kind and flattering expressions with which Dr 

 Robinson has been pleased to introduce me to this chair, and 

 to characterise my scientific labours, however coloured they 

 are by the warmth of friendship, cannot but be gratifying 

 even at a time when praise ceases to administer to vanity or 

 to stimulate ambition. The appreciationof intellectual labour 

 by those who have laboured intellectually, if not its highest, 

 is at least one of its high rewards. When I consider the 

 mental power of my distinguished friend, the value of his 

 original researches, the vast extent of his acquirements, and 

 the eloquence which has so often instructed and delighted us 

 at our annual reunions, I feel how unfit I am to occupy his 

 place, and how little I am qualified to discharge many of those 

 duties which are incident to the chair of this Association. It 

 is some satisfaction, however, that you are all aware of the 

 extent of my incapacity, and that you have been pleased to 

 accept of that which I can both promise and perform — to 

 occupy any post of labour, either at the impelling or the 

 working ai'm of this gigantic lever of science. It has been 

 the custom of some of my predecessors in this chair, to give 

 a brief account of the progress of the sciences during the 

 preceding year ; but however interesting such a narrative 

 might be, it would be beyond the power of any individual to 

 do justice to so extensive a theme, even if your time would 

 permit, and your patience endure it. I shall make no apology, 

 however, for calling your attention to a few of those topics, 

 within my own narrow sphere of study, which, from their 

 prominence and general interest, may be entitled to your 

 attention. I begin with astronomy, a study which has made 

 great progress under the patronage of this Association ; a 

 subject, too, possessing a charm above all other subjects, and 

 more connected than any with the deepest interests, past, 

 present, and to come, of every rational being. It is upon a 

 planet that we live and breathe. Its surface is the arena 

 of our contentions, our pleasures, and our sorrows. It is to 

 obtain a portion of its alluvial crust that man wastes the 

 fl ower of his days, and prostrates the energies of his mind, 

 and risks the happiness of his soul ; and it is over, or beneath, 

 its verdant turf that his ashes are to be scattered, or his 

 bones to be laid. It is from the interior, too — from the inner 



