PRESIDENCY 107 



when his council had a meeting of the Association 

 under discussion, to stigmatise our body as an 

 association of the rich, whose proceedings were of 

 no interest or value to his class ! 



THE PRESIDENCY OF THE ASSOCIATION 



In early years the Association followed the 

 German model in generally electing to the chair a 

 representative of the place of meeting. This was 

 sometimes also a noteworthy figure in science, as 

 in the cases of Buckland at Oxford (1832) and 

 Sedgwick at Cambridge (1833). Attention was also 

 paid, in accordance with the spirit of the time, to 

 social rank ; and thus among the first ten presidents 

 we find a duke, an earl, two marquises, and a viscount. 

 These were not necessarily distinguished as men of 

 science ; thus, the Marquis of Breadalbane, presiding 

 at the Glasgow meeting in 1840, left the preparation 

 of an inaugural address to the General Secretaries, 

 a duty upon which Murchison commented in a letter 

 to Whewell : ' It is my fate to have, in conjunction 

 with Sabine, to prepare a note of the King's speech, 

 to be read at Glasgow.' It was not long, however, 

 before these practices gave way to the recognition 

 of the presidency of the British Association as one 

 of the highest honours which science could bestow 

 upon its cultivators ; and as a corollary, it also 

 became an accepted view that the locality of a 

 meeting (unless in exceptional circumstances) should 

 welcome the president as a distinguished visitor, 

 rather than that he should welcome the Association 

 in his own place. The presidential address, in place 

 of a comparatively brief speech of goodwill, possibly 



