Ixiv REPORT — 1856. 



which was enacting at the very same epoch, — I mean the subversion of the 

 Bourbon dynasty. 



It is indeed not less calculated to subserve to the gratification of our 

 sense of the beautiful, than to provide against too wide a departure from 

 that order of creation which its great Author has from the beginning in- 

 stituted ; and, as two learned Professors of a sister kingdom have pointed 

 out in memoirs laid before this Association, and have since embodied in a 

 distinct treatise*, iiianifests itself not less in the geometrical adjustment of 

 the branches of a plant, and of the scales of a fir-apple — nay even, as they 

 have wished to prove, in the correspondence between the form of the fruit 

 and that of the tree on which it grows — than in the frequent juxtaposition of 

 the complementary rays of the spectrum, by which that harmony of colour 

 is jjroduced in Nature, which we are always striving, however unsuccessfully, 

 to imitate in Art. 



The law, indeed, seems to be nothing else than a direct consequence of that 

 unity of design pervading the universe, which so bespeaks a common Creator — 

 of the existence in the mind of the Deity of a sort of archetype, to which His 

 various works have all to a certain extent been accommodated ; so that the 

 earlier forms of life may be regarded as types of those of later creation, and 

 the more complex ones but as developments of rudimentary parts existing in 

 the more simple. Here too we may perhaps trace an analogy with His dealings 

 with mankind, as unfolded in His Revealed Word ; from which we find, that 

 the earlier events recorded are often typical of those more modern, and that 

 Christianity itself is in some sense a development of the Jewish dispensation 

 which preceded it. 



I should apologize for dwelling so long upon the two departments of natu* 

 ral knowledge to which I have hitherto confined myself, were it not that 

 other sciences of a still higher rank than those treated of had been discussed 

 so fully in the Discourses of former Presidents. 



Whilst indeed this is the first occasion, save one, in which a Chemist has 

 had the honour of occupying the Chair of the British Association, it has on 

 no former occasion fallen to the lot of a professed Botanist to be thus distin- 

 guished. I have therefore consulted alike my own ease, and what was due to 

 the Sciences themselves, in making Chemistry and Botany the principal themes 

 of my discourse. Leaving, then, to the gifted friend who will discourse 

 before you next Monday evening " On the Correlation of Physical Forces," 

 the task of connecting with those Powers of Nature that manifest themselves 

 in the phsenomena of chemical attraction or of cell-development, the im- 

 ponderable agents which form the proper subjects of branches of Physics not 

 here dwelt upon, and thus establishing the existence of that common brother- 

 hood among the Sciences, which furnishes the best plea for such Meetings 

 as the present, I will only further detain you by noticing one other field 

 of inquiry, in which I have ever felt a lively interest, although it has only 

 been in my power to bestow on it a casual attention, or to cultivate one 

 limited portion of the wide range which it embraces. 



Indeed Geology, the Science to which I now allude, has, during the last 

 twenty years, made such rapid strides, that those who endeavoured from an 

 early period of life to follow at a humble distance the footsteps of the great 

 leaders in that Science, obeying the impulse of such zealous and ardent 

 spirits, as the one — now, alas ! by the inscrutable decrees of Providence, lost 

 to his friends and to Science, — who constituted the Head of what was once 



* Typical Forms, by M'Cosh and Dickie. 



