ADDRESS 
BEY 
SIR DAVID BREWSTER, K.H. D.C.L. 
F.R.S.L. ἃ V.P.R.S. Epins. 
ASSOCIATE OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF FRANCE. 
GentLEmMen,—The kind and flattering expressions with which Dr. Robinson 
has been pleased to introduce me to this Chair, and to characterise my sci- 
entific labours, however coloured they are by the warmth of friendship, cannot 
but be gratifying even at an age when praise ceases to administer to vanity 
or to stimulate to ambition. The appreciation of intellectual labour by 
those who have laboured intellectually, if not its highest, is at least one of 
its high rewards, When I consider the mental power of my distinguished 
friend, the value of his original researches, the vast extent of his acquire- 
ments, and the eloquence which has so often instructed and delighted us at 
our annual reunions, I feel how unfit I am to occupy his place, and how 
little I am qualified to discharge many of those duties which are incident to 
the Chair of this Association. It is some satisfaction, however, that you are 
all aware of the extent of my incapacity, and that you have been. pleased 
to accept of that which I can both promise and perform—to occupy any post 
of labour, either at the impelling or the working arm of this gigantic lever 
of science, 
On the return of the British Association to the metropolis of Scotland, I 
am naturally reminded of the small band of pilgrims who, in 1831, carried 
the seeds of this Institution into the more genial soil of our sister land—of 
the zeal and talent with which it was fostered and organized by the Philo- 
sophical Society of York—of the hospitality which it enjoyed from the 
Primate of England—of the invaluable aid which it received from the uni- 
versities and scientific societies of the south—and of the ardent support 
with which it was honoured by some of the most accomplished of our 
nobility. From its cradle at York, the infant Association was ushered into 
the gorgeous halls of Oxford and Cambridge—the seats of ancient wisdom 
and the foci of modern science. University honours were liberally extended 
to its more active members ; and, thus decorated, our Institution was eagerly 
