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ADDRESS. xiii 
thoughts may indeed be compared to the agency of the electric telegraph of 
our own Wheatstone, which concentrates knowledge from afar, and at once 
unites the extremities of kingdoms in a common circie of intelligence. 
But although the distinguished foreigners to whom I have adverted, and 
others, including our welcome associate M. Wartmann, the Founder of the 
Vaudois Society, and M. Prevost of Geneva, on whose merits I would 
willingly dilate if time permitted it, are now collected around us; many, 
among whom I must name M. de Caumont, the President of the French 
Society for the Advancement of Science, have been prevented from ho- 
nouring us with their presence, because the national meetings in their 
- several countries also occur in the month of September. To remedy this in- 
convenience, 1 ventured, when addressing you six years ago at the Glasgow 
meeting, to express the hope, that each of the European societies might 
be led to abstain during one year from assembling in its own country, for 
the purpose of repairing by its own deputies to a general congress, to be 
held at Frankfort or other central city under the presidency of the universal 
Humboldt. Had the preparation of the ‘Cosmos’ and other avocations of 
that renowned individual permitted him to accept this proposition, which 
the British Association would doubtless have supported, many benefits to 
science must have resulted, and each national body, on re-assembling the 
following year in its native land, would, I am convinced, have more vigorously 
resumed its researches. 
But whether it be considered desirable or not to suspend the national 
scientific meetings during one year, I call on my countrymen and their foreign 
friends now present, to sustain the proposal for centralizing in a future year 
the representatives of the various branches of science of different countries, 
when they may at once learn the progress made in each nation, and when, at 
all events, they can so appoint the periods of their respective assemblies, 
as to prevent those simultaneous meetings in France, Germany, Scandinavia, 
Italy, Switzerland and England, which are so much to be deprecated as in- 
terfering with a mutual intercourse. 
Finally, my fellow-labourers in science, if by our united exertions we have 
done and are doing good public service, let me revert once more to the place 
in which we are assembled, and express on your part the gratification I know 
you experience in being on this occasion as well supported by the noblemen, 
clergymen, and landed proprietors around Southampton, as by its inhabitants 
themselves—an union which thus testifies that the British Association em- 
braces all parties and all classes of men. 
Seeing near me Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 
the Speaker of the House of Commons, and several persons of high station 
and great influence, who willingly indicate by their presence the sense 
they entertain of the value of our conferences and researches, let us wel- 
come these distinguished individuals, as living evidences of that good opinion 
of our countrymen, the possession of whiche will cheer us onward in our 
career. And above all, let us cherish the recollection of this Southampton 
Meeting, which will be rendered memorable in our annals by the pre- 
sence of the illustrious Consort of our beloved Sovereign, who participating 
in our pursuits, in some of which His Royal Highness is so well-versed, 
_ thus demonstrates that our Association is truly national, and enjoys the 
most general and effectual support throughout British society, from the 
-humblest cultivators of science to the highest personages in the realm. 
