~ 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS, a 
present, may yet be spared to participate as veterans in the 
centenary celebrations of Sir David Brewster’s founding the 
parent Association. To some extent and in a vivid manner we 
shall be able, to measure the onward course of science here by the 
periodicity of these gatherings from year to year, from decade to 
decade. Much human faculty is always going to waste; let this 
Association in its popularity collect all stray forces, especially as 
here, on new grounds, the very novelty of research must stimulate 
to more ardent action and keener emulation. Crude empiricism 
gives way in all directions to scientific ruling ; the multitude is 
awakening more and more to the importance of exact research ; a 
tide has set in to carry knowledge with all accumulating 
discoveries into every possible application; hence the rapid 
strides of technic art and rural industries, particularly in young, 
bustling communities. Yet commerce, as well as handicraft, 
often still undervalues science-work, while daily benefiting from 
it, though unseen, unrecognised and unregarded. But this 
Union can make its influence felt through deliberations and 
direct recommendations, and perhaps most powerfully so, because 
its tendencies are so eminently practical and so unselfish. Much 
in that direction are indeed our efforts, our aspirations, our 
hopes! We can at measured intervals in this Association con- 
nect researches with an extensiveness and universality such as 
no other organisation can effect ; yet we do not enter into rivalry 
with localised societies or institutions of learning ; contrarily, on 
them we lean mainly for our mental sustenance. 
The field of research is ever widening, but the horizon gets 
clearer ; the objects of research become more multitudinous, but 
the appliances for investigation are constantly enriched ; volumes 
still more instructive supersede one another; methods more 
facilitous are substituted for those of the past; incontestable 
observations are daily increasing, the elaboration of systems and 
records gets more completed, and thus endless difficulties become 
removed, which beset the path of former workers ; by such means 
an ever-accumulating science-fortune is rendered available without 
individual freedom being impaired. Yet, while the network of 
knowledge expands and the width of the meshes decreases, the 
empty interstices between the threads are proportionately aug- 
mented, though the fabric as a whole gains more firmness. The 
greatest triumph of sciences consists in bringing them into the 
fullest contact, somewhat in an Aristotelean and Plinian—or 
speaking of our own epoch—in an Humboldtian spirit. 
Discovery has its own rewards, and they are of the sublimest 
kind. When, as far back as 1817, the founder of the British 
Association perceived the endless displays of his kaleidoscope, and 
beheld other before unthought-of marvels, he lifted in pious 
admiration his eyes to heaven, well recognising that each playful 
change in the picture or every other result from his optic apparatus 
