seis rh _— 
NOTICES AND ABSTRACTS 
OF 
MISCELLANEOUS COMMUNICATIONS TO THE SECTIONS. 
MATHEMATICS AND PHYSICS. 
MATHEMATICS. 
. Opening Address by the Rev. T. R. Rowinson, D.D., FBS, M.R.LA., 
President of the Section. 
In opening the proceedings of this Section of the Association, I hope a few minutes 
of your time, precious though it be, will not be misemployed in pointing out to 
those of you who have not specially devoted yourselves to its pursuits their para- 
mount importance. Its highest department, mathematical science, is the noblest, 
the most nearly approaching to what we may suppose to be the kind of knowledge 
possessed by beings of an order superior to our own, which man can attain, By 
it alone we reach that which is the great aim of the good and wise, absolute truth. 
All the rest of our knowledge is only probable, varying in degree from the verge of 
certainty down to mere shadowy conjecture, and trustworthy exactly in proportion 
__as the intellectual processes which deduce it are trained and used in analogy to its 
practice. It is also our mightiest aid in exploring the wide fields of physical and 
_ mechanical science: in the first, without its guiding light, we wander in a region of 
_ phantoms; in the other, though empirical, or, as it is often called, practical knowledge, 
‘may give an uncertain gleam, yet they who trust to it alone will find ruin and failure in 
their path. Yet with all its supreme dominion, it can only be attractive to a very few, 
and the inferior objects of our Section—as Optics, Electricity, Magnetism, Meteoro- 
logy, and the like—will always be more popular. It were an evil hour for the human 
ace in which it should sink into a secondary place: we have always upheld it, as I 
trust we always shall do, as our guiding banner. But even for the others we have 
not laboured in vain, as was so well shown last night by our accomplished President. 
His words carried me back to the time when, twenty-two years ago, we met in this 
city for the first time; and reminded me of the important researches which were 
originated at that meeting, and of the success with which they were carried out. Some 
_ of them I shall name as evidence of what the British Association has done for science. 
_ To begin with my own special pursuits.—1]. There had been made at Greenwich during 
_ the preceding century a vast series of solar, lunar, and planetary observations, match- 
“use in the world, of the highest importance to perfect the planetary theory, but quite 
useless, because unreduced.. How troublesome that work is, none know but they who 
_ have used it; and it would, perhaps, never have been performed but that we obtained it 
” from Government. It has been perfectly accomplished under the direction of Mr. Airy. 
: _ —2. There existed a collection of star observations, the ‘ Histoire Céleste,’the proudest 
distinction of the two Lalandes, comprising 50,000 stars, all, however, unreduced and 
_ nearly useless. These we have reduced ; and at alarge pecuniary outlay, we have given 
_ to astronomers a catalogue not of less value than those of Bradley or Piazzi.—3. We 
_ originated those researches on the strength of iron, by which Hodgkinson and Fair- 
1 
1857. 
