Ixviii REPORT — 1856. 



I may mention also another proof of a greater appreciation of the claims 

 of Science, in their having departed from the practice which had prevailed 

 ever since the death of Sir Isaac Newton, of regarding the Mastership of Her 

 Majesty's Mint a purely political appointment, and in conferring it, as they 

 have done on the two last occasions, as a reward for scientific eminence. 



It is also gratifying to find, that the attention of the Legislature has at 

 length been seriously called to consider what measures of a public nature 

 might be adopted for improving the position of Science and its cultivators, 

 and that the Royal Society has appointed a Body of its Members to receive 

 suggestions on that subject, and to report upon it, in order that a matured 

 plan may be presented to Parliament to meet this object at its next Session. 



Nor, if we extend our glance to the Provinces, need I go further than 

 the neighbourhood of our present place of meeting, in order to point out as 

 many as four active clubs of naturalists, who sustain as well as diflPuse an 

 interest in our pursuits, by frequf nt meetings, and by investigating, in com- 

 mon, the physical peculiarities of their respective neighbourhoods. 



In this very county, too, we have lately witnessed the first example of an 

 Institution founded for the express purpose of communicating to the rising 

 generation of farmers, that scientific as well as practical instruction, the union 

 of which is admitted by every enlightened agriculturist to be essential, for the 

 purpose of deriving the fullest advantage from the natural resources of our 

 soil. Nor can I help feeling an honest pride when I reflect, that this Esta- 

 blishment, which has since risen to such imporlance, and is celebrated 

 throughout the land as the best training school for youths destined to hus- 

 bandry which England affords, should have emanated from the members of 

 a little club existing in a neighbouring county-town, endeared to me by 

 long associations, Irom its near proximity to the place of my birth, and the 

 home of my earliest years. 



Turning, too, to the University to which I belong, in which a few years ago 

 our pursuits were hardly regarded as integral parts of academical instruction, 

 we now find in it at least a recognition of their importance to have taken place, 

 and Classical Literature no longer disdaining to own as her Sisters, the Studies 

 which engross so large a part of the attention of the public in general. 



Nay, the Academic Body has lately devoted no small portion of its 

 revenues towards the erection of a Museum, intended to comprehend under 

 one roof all the appliances for research, as well as all the means of instruction 

 which can be required in the several branches of Natural Philosophy. 



The extension, indeed, which is now given to the name in the language of 

 naturalists, and even by the public at large, is in itself an indication of 

 correcter views than were formerly entertained with regard to the uses of 

 such Establishments. 



Few, for instance, have such a notion of a Museum as Horace Walpole 

 gave utterance to at the close of the last century*, when he defined it "a 

 " hospital for everything that is singular— whether the thing has acquired 

 " singularity from having escaped the rage of time — from any natural oddness, 



« or from being so insignificant that nobody thought it worth while to pro- 



" duce any more of the same." 



Nor will it be possible to ridicule these Institutions, as an eminent member 

 of my own University, even within my recollection, was temptid to do, in 

 alluding to the little Institutions of the kind set up in some of our pro- 

 vincial townsf. 



" The stuffed ducks, the skeleton in the mahogany case, the starved cat and 



* Fugitive Pieces. t Sewell's Letter to a Dissenter, 1834. 



