1866. | The President's Address. 523 
the Meteorological Department of the Board of Trade, with a 
staff of skilful and experienced observers. 
The President then submitted to his audience certain views of 
what has within a comparatively recent period been accomplished 
by Science, what have been the steps leading to the attained result, 
and what, as far as we may fairly form an opinion, is the general 
character pervading modern discovery. One word gave the key 
~ to the discourse; that word was continuity ; no new word, and used 
in no new sense, but perhaps applied more generally than it 
had hitherto been. ‘The speaker proceeded to show that the 
development of observational, experimental, and even deductive 
knowledge was either attained by steps so extremely small as to 
form really a continuous ascent ; or when distinct results apparently 
separate from any co-ordinate phenomena had been attained, that 
then, by the subsequent progress of Science, intermediate lmks 
had been discovered, uniting the apparently segregated instances 
with other more familiar phenomena. 
This view was applied to the recent progress of some of the 
more prominent branches of science. In astronomy, the discoveries 
in gravitation as affecting double stars; the apparent exception to 
its influence in the case of some of the nebule; the recent re- 
searches on meteorites; the observations on the intra-mercurial 
planets; the identity in chemical composition between meteorites 
and terrestrial minerals; and their specific gravity as compared with 
that of the earth, were all adduced as affording proof of continwty - 
pervading the universe. Optics likewise gave evidence in the same 
direction. The discoveries by spectrum analysis, and especially 
those of Mr. Huggins, on cometary, nebular, and stellar spectra, 
and especially of the temporary star which shone forth this year, 
and the deductions arising therefrom, were alluded to. The 
physical constitution of the Moon’s surface, and the granular 
character of that of the Sun, were finally noticed in the astronomical 
review. 
Magnetism and the conservation of force (in illustration of 
which a forgotten experiment, shown by the speaker a quarter 
of a century ago at the London Institution, was recalled), and the 
consequence resulting from the dynamical theory of heat in the 
retardation of the earth’s rotation, were rapidly referred to. The 
exhaustion of our available force stored up in coal, and the latest 
discoveries of Professor Graham, as affording us indications of 
means of storing up force, were next glanced at, although the 
speaker said that at a time when science and civilization could not 
prevent large tracts of country being irrigated by human blood, in 
order to gratify the ambition of a few restless men, it seemed an 
over-refined sensibility to occupy ourselves with providing means 
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