VI. 



MAN THE INTERPRETER OF NATURE. 



[Presidential Address at the meeting of the British Association for the 

 Advancement of Science, Brighton, 1872.] 



My Lords, Ladies, and Gentlemen, — Thirty-six years have now 

 elapsed since at the first and (I regret to say) the only meeting of 

 this Association held in Bristol — which Ancient city followed im- 

 mediately upon our national Universities in giving it a welcome — 

 I enjoyed the privilege which I hold it one of the most valuable 

 functions of these annual assemblages to bestow : that of coming 

 into personal relation with those distinguished men whose names 

 are to every cultivator of science as " household words," and the 

 light of whose brilliant example, and the warmth of whose cordial 

 encouragement are the most precious influences by which his own 

 aspirations can be fostered and directed. Under the presidency 

 of the Marquis of Lansdowne, with Conybeare and Prichard as 

 vice-presidents, with Vernon Harcourt as general secretary, and 

 John Phillips as assistant-secretary, were gathered together Whe- 

 well and Peacock, James Forbes and Sir W. Rowan Hamilton, 

 Murchison and Sedgwick, Buckland and De la Beche, Henslow 

 and Daubeny, Roget, Richardson, and Edward Forbes, with many 

 others, perhaps not le^s distinguished, of whom my own recollection 

 is less vivid. 



In his honoured old age, Sedgwick still retains, in the academic 

 home of his life, all his pristine interest in whatever bears on the 

 advance of the science he has adorned as well as enriched ; and 

 Phillips still cultivates with all his old enthusiasm the congenial 



