ADDRESS. Ixxvil 



claiming the noblest victims by thousands and tens of thousands, it would ill 

 become this Association not to mark with an expression of our sorrow and 

 admiration the self-sacrifice of that gallant band which has perished in the 

 cause of science. But their devotion has been emulated, under a still higher 

 stimulus, in the more successful career of others : and at last in the discovery 

 of the North-West Passage (still so-called in spite of its having been found 

 impassable), the courage and endurance of Captain M^Clure and his asso- 

 ciates have ascertained with certainty a most remarkable fact in the physical 

 conformation of the globe. Results of still larger, and certainly of more im- 

 mediate interest are being arrived at by the rapid march of African explo- 

 ration, — not, surely, before the time. Every part of the circumference of 

 that vast continent has been either known or accessible to us for centuries. 

 On its soil have flourished some of the most ancient and famous monarchies ; 

 and one of its great valleys is the fatherland of science. Yet up to com- 

 paratively recent times our horizon there has been bounded by the same 

 sands or mountains which bounded the knowledge of antiquity, and we had 

 almost as little acquaintance with its interior as had the Tyrian mer- 

 chant when his eye rested of old on the Peaks of Atlas. Nothing but fami- 

 liarity with the fact could have reconciled us to the ignorance in which we 

 have so long remained of one of the largest and most interesting regions of 

 the world. That ignorance is at last being cleared away ; and the exertions 

 of many individuals, amongst whom the names of Mr. Galton, of Mr. Ander- 

 son, Dr. Livingston, Dr. Baikie and Dr. Barth, stand conspicuous, have con- 

 tributed results of the deepest interest and importance. No man who values 

 science can fail to appreciate the extension of our knowledge respecting 

 geography even where, as in the Arctic regions, that knowledge is pursued 

 simply for its own sake^ But it becomes invested with tenfold interest when 

 it brings with it the largest influence on the destinies of millions of the 

 human race ; and adds, as we may confidently hope it will ultimately do in 

 the case of Africa, an inexhaustible field for manufacturing and commercial 

 enterprise. 



In connexion with the diflTusion of geographical knowledge I cannot omit 

 to mention the magnificent publications of Mr. Alexander Keith Johnston of 

 Edinburgh, in his Atlas of Physical Geography. It is seldom that such a 

 mass of information has been presented in a ?brm so beautiful and attractive ; 

 or one which tends so much to place the study of geography on a truly sci- 

 entific basis — that is to say, on the basis of its relation to the other natural 

 sciences, and those grand cosmical views of terrestrial phsenomena which have 

 found their most distinguished interpreter in Baron Humboldt. 



The kindred science of Ethnology has received of late years great deve- 

 lopment ; not only by its increasing store of facts, but by the more scientific 

 use which is being made of facts which have been long familiar. The in- 

 vestigation of the laws which regulate the growth of language, promise to 

 cast the most important lights on the history of our race ; but the conclu- 

 sions to which that investigation may lead ai'e still matters of keen and anxious 

 controversy, and are exposed to all that suspicion which has been directed 

 against almost every science at some stage or other of its growth; and 

 which, we must allow, every science has, at some stage or other, justified by 

 hasty generalization and premature deduction. 



Of all the sciences Chemistry is that which least requires to have its 

 triumphs recorded here. The immediate applicability of so many of its 

 results to the useful arts has secured for it the watchful interest of the 

 world ; and every day is adding some new proof of its inexhaustible fertility. 

 There is one department of inquiry, and that perhaps the most interesting of 



