1 84 CONTINUITY. 



requisite before a new branch of thought can be grafted with 

 success on a stem to which it is exotic. Nor should I ever 

 wish to see the study of languages, of history, of all those 

 refined associations which the past has transmitted to us, 

 neglected ; but there is room for both. It is sad to see the 

 number of so-called educated men who, travelling by railway, 

 voyaging by steamboat, consulting the almanac for the time 

 of sunrise or full-moon, have not the most elementary know- 

 ledge of a steam-engine, a barometer, or a quadrant ; and 

 who will listen with a half-confessed faith to the most idle pre- 

 dictions as to weather or cometic influences, while they are in 

 a state of crass ignorance as to the cause of the trade-winds, 

 or the form of a comet's path. May we hope that the slight 

 infiltration of scientific studies, now happily commenced, will 

 extend till it occupies its fair space in the education of the 

 young, and that those who may be able learnedly to discourse 

 on the Eolic digamma will not be ashamed of knowing the 

 principles on which the action of an air-pump, an electrical 

 machine, or a telescope depend, and will not, as Bacon com- 

 plained of his contemporaries, despise such knowledge as 

 something mean and mechanical ? 



To assert that the great departments of Government should 

 encourage physical science may appear a truism, and yet it is 

 but of late that it has been seriously done. Now the habit of 

 consulting men of science on important questions of national 

 interest is becoming a recognised practice ; and in a time, which 

 may seem long to individuals, but is short in the history of a 

 nation, a more definite sphere of usefulness for national pur- 

 poses will, I have no doubt, be provided for those duly quali- 

 fied men who may be content to give up the more tempting 

 study of abstract science for that of its practical applications. 

 In this respect the report of the Kew Committee for this year 

 affords a subject of congratulation to those whom I have the 

 honour to address. The Kew Observatory, the petted child of 

 the British Association, may possibly become an important 

 national establishment ; and if so, while it will not, I trust, 

 lose its character of a home for untrammelled physical 

 research, it will have superadded some of the functions of the 



