British Association, 405 



were original creations ; and it should be steadily kept in tiew 

 tliat tliis was merely another hypothesis, which in the abstract 

 was neither more nor less entitled to acceptance than Mr. Dar- 

 win's : neither was, in the present state of science, capable of 

 demonstration, and each must be tested by its power of explain- 

 ing the mutual dependence of the phenomena of life. For many 

 years he had held to the old hypothesis, having no better estab- 

 lished one to adopt, though the progress of botany had, in the 

 interim, developed no new facts that favoured it, but a host of 

 most suggestive objections to it. On the other hand, having 

 fifteen years ago been privately made acquainted with Mr. Dar- 

 win's views, he had during that period applied these to botanical 

 investigations of all kinds in the most distant parts of the globe, 

 as well as to the study of some of the largest and most different 

 Floras at home. Now, then, that Mr. Darwin had published it, 

 he had no hesitation in publicly adopting his hypothesis, as that 

 which offers by far the most probable explanation of all the phe- 

 nomena presented by the classification, distribution, structure, 

 and development of plants in a state of nature and under cultiva- 

 tion ; and he should, therefore, continue to use his hypothesis as 

 the best weapon for future research, holding himself ready to lay 

 it down should a better be forthcoming, or should the now aban- 

 doned doctrine of original creations regain all it had lost in his 

 experience. 



Review of Proceedings. 



Fairbairn President ! These two words announce the story of 

 the British Association for the year to come. Manchester being 

 the place selected for the meeting of 1861, it has been thought 

 both just and gracious that the honours of the chair should be 

 given to a representative man of that great city. How rapid 

 and how democratic is the movement of English life ! Mr. Fair- 

 bairn was a grown man at a time when Manchester was scarcely 

 known south of tiie Trent save as a town of cotton, just as Duns- 

 table may have been known as a town of straw ; when it had no 

 representative in the House of Commons, and scarcely any repre- 

 sentatives in the republic of science. Yet he has lived not only 

 to see its political representatives among the first in influence at 

 Westminster ; its scientific representatives seated among the 

 highest in all learned societies ; its social and commercial repre- 

 sentatives, its mayor and aldermen, received with distinction in 



