XXX REPORT—1848. 
remote from the chief seats of English learning, remote also from those great 
highways of communication by which modern ingenuity has almost accom- 
plished the extravagant wish of annihilating space and time, Swansea can- 
not with reason expect a meeting numerous as those of York, and Cambridge, 
and Oxford, and still less like those that have congregated at Liverpool and 
Glasgow. Deprived, however, of the advantages to which I have alluded, 
Swansea still possesses some attractions, and can advance some special i 
reasons why, sooner or later, it would be the duty of the British Association 
to select it for its place of meeting. Among these, I should select as one of 
the most important a consideration which is in some sense an objection ; 
namely, the fact that its inhabitants are in a corner, as it were, of Great 
Britain—that they are separated from the highways of steam. It is one of 
the objects of the British Association to visit all parts of Great Britain ;—to 
carry the torch of science everywhere, not only to enlighten but to receive 
fresh light from every portion of the island. Had Swansea been as ac- 
cessible from Bristol as Bath is, a visit to Bristol might have sufficed for 
Swansea also, just as a visit to Southampton may be considered a visit to 
Portsmouth also. 
Unless, however, the Association had come to Swansea itself, South 
Wales would have remained unvisited, and a large geographical portion of 
the island would have been left unknown to the Association in its corporate 
capacity. 
Again, Wales comprehends an important and separate portion of the island; — 
a people to whom at one time the whole of it belonged—a people speaking — 
a different and more ancient language, civilized when the Saxon and Norman 
ancestors of the proud London, and Oxford, and Cambridge of modern times — 
were heathens and barbarians—a people who had seen among them a Julius 
Cesar and a Constantine. These considerations will be of great interest at 
least to the Ethnological Section of the Association. 
To the mineralogist and geologist, again, the mineral riches of Wales, to 
which England is so much indebted for its manufacturing prosperity and 
political importance, will be no small attraction. - Moreover, the chemist and 
mechanician will be anxious to witness the ingenious processes by which iron 
and copper are here, on a gigantic scale, separated from their ores. These 
reasons are amply sufficient to account for, and indeed to demand, a visit 
from the Association,—without mentioning the warm invitation that we have | 
received, the kind hospitality that we have been promised. To those mem- — 
bers of the Association who were at Southampton and Oxford it would be 
quite superfluous to allude to the eloquent terms in which the adyocate of 
Swansea, Prof. Grove, like a potent magician, or like a representative of the 
