512 Meeting of the British Association. [ Oct., 
who else is entitled to answer? To whom has the secret been 
revealed ? Let us lower our heads and acknowledge our ignorance 
one and all. Perhaps the mystery may resolve itself into know- 
ledge at some future day. The process of things upon this earth 
has been one of amelioration. It is a long way from the Iguanodon 
and his contemporaries, to the President and Members of the British 
Association. And whether we regard the improvement from the 
scientific or from the theological point of view, as the result of 
progressive development, or as the result of successive exhibitions 
of creative energy, neither view entitles us to assume that man’s 
present faculties end the series,—that the process of amelioration 
stops at him. A time may therefore come when this ultra-scientific 
region by which we are now enfolded may offer itself to terrestrial, 
if not to human investigation. Two-thirds of the rays emitted by 
the sun fail to arouse in the eye the sense of vision. The rays 
exist, but the visual organ requisite for their translation into light 
does not exist. And so from this region of darkness and mystery 
which surrounds us, rays may now be darting which require but 
the development of the proper intellectual organs to translate them 
into knowledge as far surpassing ours as ours does that of the 
wallowing reptiles which once held possession of this planet. 
Meanwhile the mystery is not without its uses. It certainly may 
be made a power in the human soul; but it is a power which has 
feeling, not knowledge, for its base. It may be, and will be, and 
we hope is turned to account, both in steadying and strengthening 
the intellect, and in rescuing man from that littleness to which, in 
the struggle for existence, or for precedence in the world, he is 
continually prone.” 
The papers brought before the Section were very numerous, and 
we shall follow the plan adopted on former occasions of confining 
our notices to those which appear of general interest. The first 
read was the “Report of the Lunar Committee,’ in which the 
Chairman, Mr. Glaisher, referred to the progress which had been 
made in mapping the surface of the moon. No less than thirty- 
three gentlemen are engaged either in systematically observing 
certain zones in accordance with instructions issued by the 
Committee, or in examining particular objects at its request, the 
instruments employed varying from 3 inches to 22 inches in aperture. 
Instances of difference between former delineations and the present 
state of the moon’s surface are increasing, and although no decided 
instance of change has been detected, the greater the number of 
differences the nearer we approach the discovery of change. Let 
but one undisputed instance of physical change be fully established, 
and selenography acquires from that moment a new aspect. The 
study of the moon’s surface will then no longer consist in recording 
features that are unalterable, or in seeking to explain differences 
