Xxii SIXTH REPORT 1836. 



been enabled, bj* an actual participation in the business of the meetings, 

 to form a juster estimate of the real condition of the Association, and of 

 the services it has rendered to science, than the public at large could 

 collect. 



Thus circumstanced, for example, I have become sensible of results, 

 flowing from the meetings of this great body, which can scarcely figure 

 in a Report, or find expression in the accounts transmitted by the pe- 

 riodical press : — I have been struck by the enthusiasm elicited by the 

 concourse of congenial minds — the friendships formed and cemented — 

 the trains of experiment first suggested, or prosecuted anew after being 

 long abandoned; — above all, the awakening of the public mind to the 

 just claims of Science by the celebration of these Anniversaries. 



But, important as these consequences may appear, and imperfectly as 

 they may be understood by persons who keep aloof from our meetings, 

 it seems almost superfluous to dilate on such topics to those actually 

 present at them, when the mere fact of their being congregated here in 

 such numbers, conveys the best assurance that such is already their con- 

 viction. Nor is it merely the assembling of so large a portion of the 

 respectable inhabitants of this city and neighbourhood, nor yet the at- 

 tracting from a distance so great a number of the mere amateurs of 

 science, which justifies me in this conclusion ; but it is the presence of 

 so many hard-working, so many successful, cultivators of physical re- 

 search, and their devoting to the service of the Association that most 

 valuable of their possessions, their time, which gives me a right to as- 

 sume, tliat the minds of those qualified to judge on such matters (and 

 those only can be fully qualified who have been present) ai-e already 

 made up respecting the beneficial influence which this Association is 

 exerting. 



The volume, indeed, which now lies upon the table, and which con- 

 tains the results of our last year's proceedings, not only amply sustains 

 the former character of these Transactions, but even shows more strongly 

 than those which have preceded it, the power which the Association has 

 been exercising in the direct advancement of Science. It contains, in 

 the first place, several valuable contributions to our knowledge of Mag- 

 netism, — a branch of science, which within a few years, stood in a 

 manner isolated from the rest, but which now, thanks to the researches 

 of living philosophers, is shown to be intimately connected with, or rather 

 to be one of tlie manifestations of that mysterious, but all-perA'ading 

 power, which seems to be displayed not less in those molecular attrac- 

 tions that bind together the elements of every compound body, than in 

 the direction imparted to the loadstone ; perhaps even in the light and 



