ADDRESS 
BY 
SIR RODERICK IMPEY MURCHISON, G.C.Sz.S., F.R.S., V.P.G.S. 
&e. &e. 
GeEnTLEMEN,—After fifteen years of migration to various important cities 
and towns in the United Kingdom, you are for the first time assembled in the 
South-Eastern districts of England, at the solicitation of the authorities and 
inhabitants of Southampton. Easily accessible on all sides to the cultivators 
of science, this beautiful and flourishing sea-port is situated in a tract so 
adorned by nature, and so full of objects for scientific contemplation, that, 
supported as we are by new friends in England, and by old friends from 
‘distant parts of Europe, we shall indeed be wanting to ourselves, if our 
proceedings on this occasion should not support the high character which 
the British Association has hitherto maintained. 
For my own part, though deeply conscious of my inferiority to my eminent 
predecessor in the higher branches of science, I still venture to hope, that 
the devotion I have manifested to this Association from its origin to the pre- 
sent day, may be viewed by you as a guarantee for the zealous execution of 
my duties. Permit me then, Gentlemen, to offer you my warmest acknow- 
ledgements for having placed me in this enviable position; and to assure 
you, that I value the approbation which it implies as the highest honour 
which could have been bestowed on me—an honour the more esteemed from 
its being conferred in a county endeared to me by family connexions, and in 
which I rejoice to have made my first essay as a geologist. 
The origin, progress and objects of this our “ Parliament of Science ” have 
been so thoroughly explained on former occasions by your successive Pre- 
sidents, particularly in reference to that portion of our body which cultivates 
the mathematical, chemical and mechanical sciences, that after briefly allu- 
ding to some of the chief results of bygone years, with a view of impressing 
~ upon our new members the general advances we have made, I shall in this 
address dwell more particularly on the recent progress and present state of 
natural history, the department of knowledge with which my own pursuits 
have been most connected, whilst I shall also incidentally advert to some of 
the proceedings which are likely to occupy our attention during this Meeting. 
No sooner, Gentlemen, had this Association fully established its character 
as a legitimate representative of the science of the United Kingdom, and by 
its published Reports, the researches which it instituted, and the other sub- 
stantial services which it rendered to science, had secured public respect, 
than it proceeded towards the fulfilment of the last of the great objects which 
a Brewster and a Harcourt contemplated at its foundation, by inviting the, 
attention of the Government to important national points of scientific inter- 
est. At the fourth Meeting held in Edinburgh, the Association memorialized 
the Government to increase the forces of the Ordnance Geographical Survey 
of Britain, and to extend speedily to Scotland the benefits which had been 
already applied by that admirable establishment to the South of England, 
Wales and Ireland. From that time to the present it has not scrupled to call 
