opportunity for a basis of comparative national progress, tlie widest that the 

 world has yet seen, if not the best. The scientific sections of these international 

 displays are among the least prominent of their features, from causes incident 

 to their very nature ; but every arrangement was made that the most ambitious 

 organization could devise for rendeiing the gathering as effective as possible, as a 

 reunion of science and its professors, as well as of art and industry. But we 

 are not now to learn how coyly and reluctantly science lends herself to those arenas 

 where display forms the leading object. If this was felt, as I know personally 

 how much it was felt amongst those in our own agricultural department, 

 who desu'ed those accurate Tests of merit to which they had been used, I must 

 not be surprised if this want was experienced in those departments directed 

 to Science. 



One of the most striking features characterising the past year has been 

 the occurrence of a more than usual share of those events, which popularly 

 regarded as physical calamities, must yet be looked \ipon with active interest by 

 men of science as affonling opportunities for the study of the more energetic 

 phenomena of nature rarely to be seen except under the conditions of special 

 disturbance. Of this class was the extraordinary hurricane and earthquake 

 in the "West Indies at the Island of St. Thomas. As resulting from which, 

 we were startled by some intelligence which made me feel that if I had not 

 (Hke one of my jjredecessors in this chair) an Earthqiiake in Herefordshire to 

 report, I might yet console myself with the unprecedented event of the total 

 disappearance of a definite portion of the earths' surface with all its inhabitants 

 at one fell swoop of the Atlantic ; the awful intelligence having reached us by 

 telegraph of the total submergence of the Isle of Tortola, and the destruction 

 of 10,000 souls! But while the public were agape with dismay at so wholesale a 

 destruction, and awaiting with intense anxiety the more detailed jsarticulars 

 of the event, there appeared in the interval a brief and modest letter to the 

 Times, in which it was stated that such an event was contrary to the whole 

 experience derived from the records of natural phenomena — at least since the 

 Deluge — and on this s^-ound alone venturing to re-assure the minds of those 

 whom it might concern. In due course the corrected intelligence came, and 

 proved that the man of science was a true prophet (in the most legitimate 

 moaern sense of that word), and that Nature, like her great Author, was not 

 quite so cruel as men had represented. 



After this disturbance in the AVestern Hemisphere came the interesting 

 accounts of the sudden activity of Vesuvius, followed by the terrible calamity of 

 the fall of the cliff on the borgo of Sta. Lucia, at Naples. I am not aware of 

 any prescribed limit that exists to subterranean force, which should forbid the 

 su])position of a connection between volcanic action in all parts of the globe. 

 What is very interesting in I'elation to the recent and still existing eruption of 

 Vesuvius is the confirmation by Professor Palmiera, of the discovery made by our 

 countiyman, Hamilton, of the periodicity of the action, and its dependence on lunar 



