Anniversary Address of H. R.H. the late President. 57 



are composed of a selection of those Fellows of the Society vho 

 are known to have devoted their attention, in a more especial man- 

 ner, to those departments of science to which they are severally 

 assigned, and to whom all questions connected with such branches 

 are proposed to be referred, including the selection of the memoirs 

 to which the Royal Medals shall be given. The Council have 

 thought proper, likewise, in the formation of these committees, to 

 enlarge the number of the sciences, which form the Medallic cycle 

 above referred to, from six to eight, by separating the science of 

 Meteorology from that of Physics, and the science of Botany and 

 the laws of Vegetable Organization and Life, from that of Zoology 

 and Animal Physiology. I sincerely rejoice, Gentlemen, in the 

 adoption of this arrangement, as I think it admirably calculated to 

 give a more marked and specific distinction to those sciences which 

 the Fellows of the Royal Society are bound more especially, by the 

 obligations of the Charter, to cultivate, and as tending, likewise, to 

 bring those persons who are engaged in common pursuits into more 

 frequent intercourse with each other; and thus to afford them in- 

 creased opportunities of appreciating their mutual labours, of de- 

 vising new and important trains of investigation, as well as of se- 

 curing public aid and general co-operation in the accomplishment 

 of objects which are too costly or too vast for individuals to under- 

 take or to attempt. 



The future developement of many of the sciences is becoming 

 daily more and more dependent upon co-operative labour. We are 

 rapidly approaching great and comprehensive generalizations, which 

 can only be completely established or disproved by very widely 

 distributed and, in many cases, by absolutely simultaneous observa- 

 tions. Major Sabine has lately collected with great labour, and re- 

 duced and analysed with great ability, a vast mass of observations 

 relating to the distribution of the earth's magnetism ; and the result 

 has pointed out not merely the proper fields of our future researches, 

 but likewise their great extent and the enormous amount of labour 

 still requircjd for their cultivation. A society on the continent, headed 

 by the justly celebrated Gauss, to whom the Copley Medal has been 

 this year adjudged tor iiis magnetical researches, my cotemporary and 

 fellow student at Giittingen, has instituted a system of simultaneous 

 observations on the periodical and irregular movements of the mag- 

 netic needle at various stations in ditt'erent parts of Europe, which 

 suggest conclusions of the most surprising and interesting nature ; 

 tJK^se can only be fully worked out and confirmed by the ado]}tion 

 of a similar system of observations in places extremely remote from 

 each other on tiie surface of the globe. The researches on the tides, 

 which have been so laboriously and so successfully prosecuted by 

 Professor \Vh(!\veU and Mr. Lubbock, liave led, and can lead to lew 

 general and certain conclusions M'itiiout the aid of labours of tiiis 

 nature ; and a memorable exemplificaticjii of tlieir value, even wIkmi 

 given in their rudest and least perfect form*, is presented in the 



• From the logs of ships. 



