xl REPORT—1846. 
United States of America, and who is now worthily presiding over the Cam- 
bridge University of his native soil, spoke to us with chastened eloquence 
of the benefits our Institution was conferring on mankind; let us rejoice 
that this Meeting is honoured by the presence of foreign philosophers as 
distinguished as those of any former year. 
Let us rejoice that we have now among us men of science from Den- 
mark, Sweden, Russia, Prussia, Switzerland, Italy and France. The King 
of Denmark, himself personally distinguished for his acquaintance with 
several branches of natural history, and a warm patron of science, has 
honoured us by sending hither, not only the great discoverer Oersted, who 
evincing fresh vigour in his mature age brings with him new communications 
on physical science, but also my valued friend, the able geologist and chemist 
Forchhammer, who has produced the first geological map of Denmark, and 
who has presented to us a lucid memoir on the influence exercised by marine 
plants on the formation of ancient crystalline rocks, on the present sea and 
on agriculture. 
As these two eminent men and their associates of the North received me 
as the General Secretary of the British Association with their wonted cor- 
diality at the last Scandinavian Scientific Assembly, I trust we may convince 
them that the sentiment is reciprocal, and that Englishmen are akin to them 
in the virtues of friendship and hospitality which so distinguish the dwellers 
within the circle of Odin. 
Still adverting to Scandinavia, we see here a deputy from the country of Lin- 
nzeus in the person of Professor Svanberg, a successful young experimenter in 
physics, who represents his great master Berzelius—that profound chemist and 
leader of the science of the North of Europe, who established on a firm basis 
the laws of atomic weights and definite proportions, and who has personally 
assured me, that if our Meeting had not been fixed in the month of September, 
when the agriculturists of Sweden assemble at Stockholm, he would as- 
suredly have repaired to us. And if the same cause has prevented Nilsson 
from coming hither, and has abstracted Retzius from us (who was till within 
these few days in England), I cannot mention these distinguished men, who 
earnestly desired to be present, without expressing the hope, that the memoirs 
they communicate to us may give such additional support to our British ethno- 
logists, as will enable this new branch of science, which investigates the origin 
of races and languages, to take the prominent place in our assemblies to 
which it is justly entitled. 
The Royal Academy of Berlin, whose deputies on former occasions have 
been an Ehrenberg, a Buch, and an Erman, has honoured us by sending 
hither M. Heinrich Rosé, whose work on chemical analysis is a text-book 
‘even for the most learned chemists in every country ; and whilst his researches 
on the constitution of minerals, like those of his eminent brother Gustave on 
their form, have obtained for him so high a reputation, he now brings to us 
the description of a new metal which he has discovered in the Tantalite of 
Bavaria. 
Switzerland has again given to us that great master in paleontology, Agassiz, 
who has put arms into the hands of British geologists with which they have 
conquered vast regions, and who now on his road to new fields in America, 
brings to us his report on the fossil fishes of the basin of London, which will, he 
assures me, exceed in size all that he has ever written on ichthyolites. 
From the same country we have our warm friend Professor Schénbein, who, 
in addition to his report on Ozone, to which I have already referred, has now 
brought to us a discovery which promises to be of vast practical importance. 
The “ gun-cotton” of Schénbein, the powers of which he will exhibit to his 
