PROCEEDINGS OF THE MEETING. XIU 



as an occasional amusement, — to feel that for tliem a field lies 

 open which tomorrow they may call their own, — to lend them 

 such aid as may promote the success of their exertions, by re- 

 moving the preliminary difficulties, and pointing out the exist- 

 ing boundary betwixt the known and the unknown, — to stimu- 

 late these exertions and those of others who have already be- 

 come, to a certain degree, familiarized with the labours and with 

 the results of intellectual toil, by enabling them to mix with the 

 veterans in each department who have gained, and who still con- 

 tinue to gain, the highest rewards which the investigation of na- 

 ture confers, — who will point out the methods which they pur- 

 sued, the disappointments which they met, and the difficulties 

 which they surmounted, thus affording at once the gratification 

 which every generous mind feels in personal communication 

 with those who have signalized themselves by intellectual achieve- 

 ment, and the instruction and encouragement for the pursuit of 

 a similar course which words, and words alone, can impart, — 

 these we hold out as amongst the first and the most valuable 

 objects proposed to be attained by the institution of this Asso- 

 ciation. 



" No doubt societies for the promotion of natural knowledge 

 have been in existence for near two centuries, and these have 

 done much to the due advancement of science itself, as well as 

 the promotion of a more general taste for its cultivation. They 

 were admirably adapted to the period of their institution, when 

 the difficulties of ordinary communication, and the want of sci- 

 entific journals, made the Royal Society of London the great 

 centre of philosophical information, — when new experiments 

 were there first repeated, — when new theories were there first 

 discussed, — and when its Transactions, and those of the other 

 academies of Europe — fraught with the literary treasures which 

 Hooke and Wren, and Boyle and Leibnitz, and the Bernouillis, 

 loved to display, and which Newton alone loved to conceal — 

 were the couriers which published to Europe the intelligence of 

 the successive intellectual victories of that mighty age. Rarely 

 even then, however, and latterly still less, did these societies at- 

 tempt to guide in any specific direction the investigations of their 

 members, or to form any school of science for the initiation of 

 fresh inquirers. The formation of such schools of disciples wlio 

 voluntarily combined under some philosopher of emuience, partly 

 did away with the necessity of this on the Continent ; whilst the 

 total want of anything similar in our own country, and the less 

 specific objects of those honorary rewards which from time to 

 time have been given by learned societies in all countries, and 

 which have occasionally drawn forth all the powers of some mas- 



