THE COUNCIL. 



With a just sense, therefore, of the importance to science, of 

 combining the Philosophical Societies dispersed through the 

 different provinces of the kingdom in a general co-operative 

 union, the British Association has not only invited them to 

 join its Meetings, but has given to those whom they may 

 specially depute to represent them, the privilege of becoming 

 Members of the Committee by which its affairs are conducted. 



It appears to the Council that in availing themselves of the 

 bond of connection thus offered. Societies will not only contri- 

 bute most essentially to the success of this extensive plan, but 

 will add greatly to their own efficiency. When individuals meet 

 for scientific objects, the effect of the general effort, emulation, 

 and example is to produce a spirit of exertion which gives to 

 such Meetings their principal value. And if Societies shall 

 concur, as is now proposed, in thus meeting each other, in pro- 

 posing certain common objects, in communicating from year to 

 year the means which they are using, and the progress which 

 they are making, it seems impossible that this should be done 

 in the presence of an assembly concentrating a great part of the 

 scientific talent of the nation without kindling an increased 

 ardour of emulous activity ; it seems impossible that the 

 Deputies of any Society should attend such Meetings without 

 bringing back into its bosom an enlargement of views, and 

 conveying to its members new lights of knowledge, new motives 

 to inquiry, and new encouragement to perseverance. 



The actual assembling of one of the Meetings at the place 

 in which ^ny Society is established, has a tendency to produce 

 the same effect in a still more powerful degree, and the Council 

 does not hesitate to state that this Institution has received a 

 sensible impulse, in all these respects, from the visit with which 

 it has recently been honoured. The plan, indeed, on which this 

 Society was first founded, and on which it has always been 

 conducted, is in the spirit of the design which may now be 

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