422 Proceedings iyf'ilic Br'iUsh Aasue'iat'ion. 



exact image of the effect of the communications and intercourse we have 

 here established. How man^" hints are liere tlirown out during j'our dis- 

 cussions, which, when followed up, lead to the most important results? 

 How manv useful suo-gcstions are here offered as to the mode of prose- 

 cutino- particular discoveries, and how many are roused to exertion by 

 the intcrconuimnication of kindred miuds, and supported in their exer- 

 tions, bv knowing that there are others who take an interest in their suc- 

 cess ? But if it were possible for a moment to overlook these great ad- 

 vantages, and to value these meetings merely as affording the opportuni- 

 ties of rational recreation, I would still appeal to the lovers of science, 

 and the admirers of those by whom it is extended, and I would ask them, 

 where, or in what society, can they hope to find the means of gratification 

 so high, so ennobling, so heartfelt, as that which they may here expect to 

 enjoy ? For myself, I can truly assert, that I know of nothing that could 

 bribe me to withdraw my unworthy self from the rolls of this Association, 

 or to dcnv myself the opportunities here so freely afforded, of cultivating 

 the personal friendships of those who have been heretofore the objects of 

 my distant admiration ; and that if this Association had nothing else to 

 recommend it, but that it is the source of such high satisfaction, I should 

 reo'ard its declension as a calamity to be de])lored ; but this I say without 

 any apprehension of such a result. The danger, if it had ever existed, 

 has already passed. This Association has already exhibited too many 

 and solid proofs of its usefulness, ever to be slighted ; it has left too many 

 pleasing recollections ever to be abandoned. 



Professor Hamilton then read the followin;^ Report: — 



It has fallen to my lot, gentlemen, as one of your Secretaries for the 

 year, to address you on the present occasion. The duty would indeed 

 have been much better discharged, had it been undertaken by mj- brother 

 secretarv ; but so many other duties of our secretaryship had been per- 

 formed "almost entirely by him, that I could not refuse to attempt the 

 execution of this particular office, though conscious of its difficulty and 

 its importance. For if we may regard it as a thing established now bj' 

 precedent and custom that an annual address should be delivered, it is 

 not therefore yet, and I trust that it will never be, an office of mere cold 

 routine, a filling up of a vacant hour, on the ground that the hour must 

 be some way or other got rid of. You have not left your homes — you 

 have not acljourned from .your several and special businesses — you have 

 not o-athered here to have .your time thus frittered away, in an idle and 

 unmeaning ceremonial. There ought to be, and there is, a reason that 

 some such thing should be done ; that from vear to year, at cverj- suc- 

 cessive re-assembling, au officer of your body should lay before you 

 such an address ; and in remembering what this reason is, we shall be 

 reminded also of the spirit in M'liich the duty should be performed. The 

 reason is, the fitness, and almost the necessity of providing, so far as an 

 address can provide, for the permanence and progression of the body, by 

 informing the new members, and reminding the old, of tlie objects and 

 nature of the Association, or by giving utterance to at least a few of those 

 reflections which at such a season present themselves, respecting its pro- 

 o-ress and its prospects : and it is a valid reason, and deserves to be acted 

 upon now, however little may have been left untried in the addresses of 

 my predecessors in this office. For if even amongst the members who 

 have attended former meetings, and have heard those eloquent addresses 

 delivered by former secretaries, it is possible that some may have been 

 so daz7.1ed by the splendour of the spectacle, and so rapt away by the 

 enthusiasm of the time, as to have given but little thought to the purport 

 and the use, the meaning and the function of the whole ; much more may 

 it be presumed that of the several hundred persons who have lately joined 



