ADDRESS. lxili 
brings with it public duties, but gifted with a strong natural taste for the 
pursuits of science, do manage to succeed in a greater or less degree in com- 
bining both. Success is in such cases the more honourable, and is the more 
admired, because it manifests the strength of the original disposition, and in- 
dicates how much more might probably have been accomplished by an 
undivided attention. The economy of human labour points specially to such 
‘men as the most suitable representatives of science in the legislature of which 
_ they already form a part. The selection from amongst them of a certain 
number to be particularly charged with the duties of watching over and pro- 
moting the interests of science, either with Government or in the Legislature 
appears in this view a most happy expedient. We cannot read over the 
_ names of the noblemen and gentlemen who form the Parliamentary Committee 
_ of the British Association, without being satisfied that science would not be 
likely to be more honourably or more ably represented by any system of 
direct representation ; nor can we look to the discretion and practical wisdom 
with which the proceedings of the Committee have been conducted in the 
first year of its existence, without being impressed with the belief that it is 
destined to render important services both to the country and to ourselves. 
Gentlemen, I have now occupied fully as much of your time and attention 
as I can venture to trespass upon, and yet have found it impossible to com- 
prehend within the limits of a discourse all the topics to which I would gladly 
have called your notice, even in those branches of knowledge in which I 
may consider myself least uninformed, in three of the seven departments 
into which our science is divided. I have left wholly untouched those wide 
fields of Geology and Natural History, which would of themselves have 
furnished fitting subjects for an address of still longer duration. No one can 
be more sensible of this, and of many other imperfections and deficiencies, 
_ than the individual who addresses you; yet, if he has not wholly failed in 
_ the purpose he designed—if the impression which he has endeavoured to 
_ convey, however faint may be the image, be true to that which it is intended 
_ to represent,—you have not failed to recognise the gratifying picture of 
_ British Science in the full career of energetic action and advancement, press- 
_ ing forward in every direction to fill the full measure of the sphere of its 
activity in the domain of intellectual culture ; regardful on the one hand of 
the minutest details in the patient examination of natural faets, and on the 
other hand diligent in combining them into generalizations of the highest 
order, by the aid of those principles of inductive philosophy, which are the 
| surest guide of the human intellect to the comprehension of the laws and 
order of the material universe. 








