Jbr the Advaiicement of Science. 9S 



you. Astronomy^ which stands first on the list, is not only the 

 queen of sciences, but in a stricter sense of the term, the only 

 perfect science ; — the only branch of human knowledge in which 

 particulars are completely subjugated to generals, effects to 

 causes ; in which the long observation of the past has been, by 

 human reason, twined into a chain which binds in its links the re- 

 motest events of the future ; — in which we are able fully and 

 clearly to interpret Nature's oracles, so that by that which we 

 have tried we receive a prophecy of that which is untried. The 

 rules of all our leading facts have been made out by observations 

 of which the science began with the earliest dawn of history ; the 

 grand law of causation by which they are all bound together has 

 been enunciated for 150 years ; and we have in this case an ex- 

 ample of a science in that elevated state of flourishing maturity, 

 in which all that remains is to determine with the extreme of 

 accuracy the consequences of its rules by the profoundest com- 

 binations of mathematics, the magnitude of its data by the mi- 

 nutest scrupulousness of observation ; in which, further, its claims 

 are so fully acknowledged, that the public wealth of every na- 

 tion pretending to civilization, the most consummate productions 

 of labour and skill, and the loftiest and most powerful intellects 

 which appear among men, are gladly and emulously assigned to 

 the task of adding to hs completeness. In this condition of the 

 science it will readily be understood that Professor Airy, your 

 Reporter upon it, has had to mark his desiderata, in no cases 

 but those where some further development of calculation, some 

 further delicacy of observation, some further accumulation of 

 exact facts, are requisite ; though in every branch of the sub- 

 ject the labour of calculation, the delicacy of observation, and 

 the accumulation of exact facts, have already gone so far, that 

 the mere statement of what has been done can hardly be made 

 credible or conceivable to a person unfamiliar with the study. 



One article indeed in his list of recommendations to future 

 labourers read at the last Meeting of the Association, may ap- 

 pear capable of bting accomplished by more limited labour thaa 

 the rest: — the determination of the mass of Jupiter by observa- 

 tions of the elongations of his satellites. And undoubtedly, 

 many persons were surprised when they found that on this, so 

 obvious a subject of interest, no measures had been obtained 



