412 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Dec. 



student who depends for his information regarding them on books 

 and on scientific journals, has, after all, but a faint impression of 

 the newer phases of scientific enquiry. On attending the meeting 

 of the British Association at Birmingham, after a lapse of ten 

 years, I had forcibly presented to my mind many changes in men 

 and things. Some of the older men had passed away, or were 

 disabled by age and infirmities from active labor. Those who 

 were young and little known had attained to maturity of years 

 and an established reputation. A host of younger men had risen 

 up. In those departments of science in which I am more especially 

 interested, many new discoveries had been made, or new theories 

 broached. The striking and prolific doctrine of the correlation of 

 forces had been worked out. The method of spectrum analysis had 

 been devised, enabling us to attain a knowledge of the chemical 

 composition even of distant heavenly bodies. The hypothesis of 

 the indefinite variation of species had been revived, and had rapidly 

 become popular among the younger scientific men. The later 

 tertiary deposits had yielded evidences of the possible existence of 

 man in the time of the extinct mammoth; while the oldest 

 rocks, before esteemed azoic, had yielded evidences of animal life. 

 In physics, in chemistry, in geology, and in natural history, a mul- 

 titude of new and important facts, filling great volumes of proceed- 

 ings and transactions, had been discovered and given to the 

 world ; so that every department of science might be said to 

 occupy a new stand-point, and a host of new subjects of discussion 

 had arisen. When we think of the vast range of study and 

 investigation comprised in the proceedings of the British Asso- 

 ciation for the last ten years, and look back to the dim beginnings 

 of science in a distant antiquity, and forward to the possible 

 solutions of the hundreds of questions still agitated, it becomes a 

 matter of doubt whether we should congratulate ourselves on the 

 vast progress made toward the right understanding of nature, or 

 should sink appalled in the presence of the apparent boundless- 

 ness of the unknown. True science is ever disposed to view its 

 position with humility, and to regard the ever widening circle of 

 knowledge as only ever enlarging our conceptions of the amount 

 of what remains to be known, before we shall meet that point, where 

 the possibilities of the finite understanding shall be overtasked, in 

 the presence of an incomprehensible infinity. 



The sessions of the British Association are limited to a week — 

 a period generally found too short satisfactorily to dispose of the 



