ASSOCIATIONS FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. (BRITISH.) 



It included a statement of the election as corre- 

 sponding members of the following scientists, 

 who were in attendance at the Edinburgh meet- 

 ing : Dr. Svante Arrhenius, of Stockholm ; Prof. 

 Marcel Bertrand, of Paris; Prof. F. Elfving, of 

 Helsingfors; Prof. Leo Errera. of Brussels; 

 Prof. G. Fritsch. of Berlin ; President Daniel C. 

 Gilman, of Baltimore ; Dr. C. E. Guillaume, of 

 Sevres ; Prof. Rosenthal, of Erlangen ; and Dr. 

 Maurits Snellen, of Utrecht. The following 

 resolutions were received during the year : 



That the council be requested to draw the at- 

 tention of the Local Government Board to the 

 desirability of the publication of the " Report on 

 the Examination into Deviations from the Nor- 

 mal among 50,000 Children in Various Schools," 

 which has been presented to that board by the 

 British Medical Association ; and 



That the council be requested to draw the 

 attention of her Majesty's Government to the 

 anthropometric method for the measurement of 

 criminals, which is successfully in operation in 

 France, Austria, and other Continental coun- 

 tries, and which has been found effective in the 

 identification of habitual criminals, and conse- 

 quently in the prevention and repression of 

 crime. 



Both resolutions were acted on favorably. The 

 announcement that an index to the reports of 

 the association for the years 1861 to 1890 had 

 been completed by Mr. Griffith was made. The 

 general treasurer reported that for the first time 

 the association had 62 odd to the good, whereas 

 in the last two years they had been 1,200 to 

 the bad. There was still great need for econo- 

 my. He could not refrain from a remonstrance 

 on the cost of the printing, which was unneces- 

 sarily increased by the number of corrections 

 made in proofs by the authors of papers. In one 

 paper alone the amount thus spent was 25. 



Besides other formal business a vote of thanks 

 was passed, acknowledging the services of Sir 

 Archibald Geikie. The first general gathering 

 was held in the evening in Albert Hall, when the 

 retiring president introduced his successor, who 

 then addressed the association on " Biology and 

 its Relations with Other Branches of Science." 



The President's Address. In opening his 

 address Prof. Burdon-Sanderson said "that at 

 the last meeting of the British Association in 

 Nottingham Section D assumed for the first 

 time the title which it has since held that of 

 the section of biology " ; hence, taking the word 

 biology as his starting point, he gave an account 

 of its origfn and first use, and of the relations 

 which subsist between biology and other branches 

 of natural science. The word biology, now so 

 familiar, was unknown at the beginning of the 

 century. It was first employed by Treviranus, 

 who proposed to himself as a life task the devel- 

 opment of a new science, the aim of which 

 should be to study the forms and phenomena of 

 life, its origin, and the conditions and laws of 

 its existence. He commended biology as a study 

 which above all others " nourishes and main- 

 tains the taste for simplicity and nobleness; 

 which affords to the intellect ever new material 

 for reflection, and to the imagination an inex- 

 haustible source of attractive images." He de- 

 fined life as consisting in the reaction of the 

 organism to external influences, and contrasted 



the uniformity of vital reactions with the variety 

 of their exciting causes. This definition can 

 still be accepted as true. The first thing we ob- 

 serve about the activities of an organism is that 

 they are of two kinds, according as we consider 

 the action of the whole organism in its relation 

 to the external world or to other organisms, or 

 the action of the parts or organs in relation to 

 each other. This distinction between the inter- 

 nal and external relations of plants and animals 

 has always existed ; hence, there have been two 

 kinds of biologists those who make it their aim 

 to investigate the action of the organism by 

 methods of physics and chemistry, and those 

 who study the place that the organism occupies, 

 and the part which it plays in the economy of 

 nature (called " cacology "). This conception of 

 biology Prof. Burdon-Sanderson then attempted 

 to demonstrate, using illustrations which ap- 

 pealed to him most strongly, and especially such 

 as were in the special division of biology to 

 which he himself belonged. 



The origin of life, the first transition from 

 nonliving to living, is a riddle that lies outside 

 of our scope. Organized nature, as it now pre- 

 sents itself, has become what it is by a process 

 of gradual perfection or advancement brought 

 about by the elimination of those organisms 

 which failed to obey the fundamental principle 

 of adaptation. Biology naturally falls into 

 three divisions, and these are even more sharply 

 distinguished by their methods than by their 

 subjects, namely : physiology, of which the meth- 

 ods are entirely experimental; morphology, the 

 science which deals with the forms and structure 

 of plants and animals, and of which it may be 

 said that the body is the anatomy, the soul, de- 

 velopment; and czcology, which uses all the 

 knowledge it can obtain from the other two, 

 but chiefly rests on the exploration of the end- 

 less varied phenomena of animal and plant life 

 as they manifest themselves under natural con- 

 ditions. Then, taking up the first of these 

 physiology he discussed its origin and scope. 

 Physiology as a science began with Johannes 

 Muller, who taught in Berlin from 1833 to 1857. 

 The development is due to his successors, Brilcke, 

 Du Bois-Reymond, Helmholtz, who were his 

 pupils, and Ludwig in Germany, and to Claude 

 Bernard in France, who are " the founders of 

 our science." The specific energies of the or- 

 ganism he discussed very fully, taking his 

 many illustrations from special manifestations 

 of energy in response to light, color, sound, etc., 

 by the lower organisms. Concerning experi- 

 mental psychology, a region between two meth- 

 ods of investigation of questions which are 

 closely related, much work had recently been 

 accomplished, which he described somewhat in 

 detail. On this subject he said : " Between the 

 two that is, between sensation and the begin- 

 ning of action there is an intervening region 

 which the physiologist has hitherto willingly 

 resigned to psychology, feeling his incompetence 

 to use the only instrument by which it can be 

 explored that of introspection." The results 

 of experiment psychology tend to show that 

 sensation and allied processes are as truly func- 

 tions of organism as the contraction of a muscle 

 or as the changes produced in the retinal pig- 

 ment by light. The behavior of unicellular or- 



