NA TURE 



405 



THURSDAY, AUGUST 28, 1S79 



THE BRITISH ASSOCIA TION A T SHEFFIELD 



THE Forty-ninth Annual Meeting of the British Asso- 

 ciation must be reckoned one of decided success. 

 The large number and variety of papers read in the 

 sections, the excellence of presidential and sectional 

 addresses and of evening discourses, the satisfaction 

 afforded by local and general arrangements, and not 

 least by the favourable meteorological conditions prevail- 

 ing during the week, have all contributed to make the 

 Sheffield gathering one to be remembered with pleasure. 



The president, Dr. AUman, had the misfortune at the 

 outset to be suffering from a severe cold, which made the 

 delivery of his admirable address somewhat laboured and 

 painful. But his audience proved sympathetic and even 

 enthusiastic ; and the printed copies of his address have 

 been eagerly demanded on all hands. Whether prepared 

 to agree with the dictum that irritability as a property of 

 matter is the one grand characteristic phenomenon of all 

 living things, or not, none will dispute the extreme ability 

 and lucidity of the address. 



Surprise has been expressed in some quarters that Prof. 

 AUman should have ventured to found such momentous 

 speculations, even partly, on so unstable a basis as 

 " Bathybius," and in this connection Prof. Huxley's re- 

 marks in supporting the vote of thanks to the president 

 are well worth reproducing : — 



" It is my business to recollect, on the present occasion, 

 that I have come to praise Ca:sar, and not to bury him 

 under any mountain of talk of my own ; and I will, there- 

 fore, not venture to dwell upon any of those very large topics 

 upon which he has dwelt with so much fairness, with so 

 much judgment, and with so remarkable a knowledge 

 of the existing information respecting them. But I will 

 ask you to allow me to say one word rather on my own 

 account, in order to prevent a misconception which, I 

 think, might arise, and which I should regret if it did arise. 

 I dare say that no one in this room, who has attained 

 middle life, has been so fortunate as to reach that age with- 

 out being obliged now and then to look back upon some ac- 

 quaintance, or, it may be, intimate ally of his youth, who 

 has not quite verified the promises of that youth. Nay, 

 let us suppose he has done the very reverse, and has 

 become a very questionable sort of character, and a 

 person whose acquaintance does not seem quite so desir- 

 able as it was in those young days ; his way and yours 

 have separated ; you have not heard much about him ; 

 but eminently trustworthy persons have assured you he 

 has done this, that, or the other ; and is more or less of a 

 black sheep, in fact. The president, in the early part of 

 his address, alluded to a certain thing — I hardly know 

 whether I ought to call it thing or not — of which he gave 

 you the name Bathybius, and he stated, with perfect 

 justice, that I had brought that thing into notice ; at any 

 rate, indeed, I christened it, and I araj in a certain sense, 

 its earliest friend. For some time after that interesting 

 Bathybius was launched into the world, a number of ad- 

 mirable persons took the little thing by the hand, and 

 made very much of it, and, as the president was good 

 enough to tell you, I am glad to be able to repeat and 

 verify all the statements, as a matter of fact, which I had 

 ventured to make about it. And so things went on, and 

 I thought my young friend Bathybius 'would turn cut a 

 credit to me. But I am sorry to say, as time has gone 

 on, he has not altogether verified the promise of his vouth. 

 In the fust place, as the president told you, he could not 

 VoT, XX. — No, 513 



be found when he was wanted ; and in the second place, 

 when he was found, all sorts of things were said about 

 him. Indeed, I regret to be obliged to tell you that some 

 persons of severe minds went so far as to say that he v/as 

 nothing but simply a gelatinous precipitate of slime, which 

 had carried down organic matter. If that is so, I am very 

 sorry for it, for whoever else may have joined in this error, 

 I am undoubtedly primarily responsible for it. But I do 

 not know at this present time of my own knowledge how 

 the matter stands. Nothing would please me more than 

 to investigate the matter afresh in the way it ought to be 

 investigated, but that would require a voyage of some 

 time, and the investigation of this thing in its native 

 haunts is a kind of work for which, for many years past, 

 I have had no opportunity, and which I do not think I 

 am very likely to enjoy again. Therefore my own judg- 

 ment is in an absolute state of suspension about it. I can 

 only warn you what has been said about this friend of 

 mine, but I cannot say whether what is said is justified or 

 not. But I feel very happy about the matter. There is 

 one thing about us men of science, and that is no one 

 who has the greatest prejudice against science can venture 

 to say that we ever endeavour to conceal each other's 

 mistakes. And, therefore, I rest in the most entire and 

 complete confidence that if this should happen to be a 

 blunder of mine, some day or other it will be carefully 

 exposed by somebody. But pray let me remind you 

 whether all this story about Bathybius be right or wrong 

 makes not the smallest difference to the general argument 

 of the remarkable address put before you to-night. All 

 the statements your president has made are just as true, as 

 profoundly true, as if this little eccentric I5athybius did 

 not exist at all. I congratulate you upon having had the 

 opportunity of listening to an address so profound, so 

 exhaustive in all respects, and so remarkable, and I ask 

 you to join in the vote of thanks which has just been pro- 

 posed." 



A clever metrical skit on the president's address by an 

 eminent geologist caused considerable amusement to 

 those who had the privilege of seeing it. 



Tlie first of the evening discourses was by Mr. W. 

 Crookes, F.R.S., upon Radiant Matter, and was illus- 

 trated by a unique display of those exquisite experiments 

 on the movements of molecules in high vacua which have 

 recently attracted so much attention. Nothing could 

 exceed the beauty or brilliance of the experiments, which 

 were made on a scale sufficiently large to be visible to 

 an audience of nearly two thousand persons. The final 

 experiment of allowing the air to enter through a micro- 

 scopic hole into an exhausted radiometer bulb of large 

 dimensions afforded the lecturer the means of making a 

 most telling illustration of the enormous figures which 

 must be employed in calculating the numbers of mole- 

 cules contained in a small space. 



The second discourse, by Prof. Ray Lankester, F.R.S., 

 on Degeneration, was an attempt to establish that the 

 laws of organic evolution may work downwards as well as 

 upwards, reducing a free crustacean to a barnacle, or a 

 vertebrate to an ascidian : a view which may at least 

 claim some antiquity on its side since it is but an ex- 

 pansion of the Koran legend of Moses and the men of 

 the Dead Sea who degenerated into apes. 



The Saturday evening lecture by Mr. W. E. Ayrton, 

 upon the Transmission of Power by Electricity, was 

 listened to by a crowded audience, a large proportion 

 of whom were working men, and was illustrated experi- 

 mentally on a large scale. 



In the sections much good work has been done. Sec- 

 tion A (Mathematics and Physics) has been remarkable 

 for the absence of great names, yet it has been well 

 attended on the whole. A paper on Etherspheres as a 

 vera causa in Natural Philosophy, by Rev. S. EarnshaWy 

 has deservedly attracted attention as giving forth a most 

 ingenious speculation on the mechanics, so to speak, of 



