1845.J 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL 



199 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS 



To the British Association for the Advancement oj Science, held at 



Caml/ridge, June 1815. 



By Sir Vf. IIerschkl, President. 



Gentlemen,— The terms of kindness in which I have been introduced to 

 your notice by my predecessor in tlic office wliich you have called on me to 

 fill, have bceii griitil'ying to me in no common degree — not as contributing 

 to the excitement of personal vanity (a feeling which the circumstances in 

 which I stand, and the presence of so many individuals every way my supe- 

 riors, must tend powerfully to chastize), but as the emanation of a friendship 

 begun at this University when we were youths together, preparing for our 

 examinations for degrees, and contemplating each other, perhaps, with some 

 degree of rivalry (if that can be called rivalry from which every spark of 

 jealous feeling is absent). That friendship has since continued, warm and 

 unshadowed for a single instant by the slightest clcud of disunion, and among 

 idl the stirring and deep-seated remembrances which the sight of those walls 

 with which we are now assembled arouse, I can summon none more every 

 way delightful and cheering than the contemplation of that mutual regard. 

 It is, therefore, with no common feelings that 1 find myself now placed in 

 this chair, as the representative of such a body as the British Association, 

 and as the successor of such a friend and of such a man as its late President. 

 Progress of Science in Cambridye. 



Gentlemen, — There are many sources of pride and satisfaction, in which 

 telj has no place, which crowd upon a Cambridge man in revisiting for a 

 second time this University, as the scene of our annual labours. The de- 

 velopment of its material splendour which has taken place in that interval of 

 twelve years, vast and noble as it has been, has been more than kept pace 

 with by the triumphs of its intellect, the progress of its system of instruction, 

 and the influence of that progress on the public mind and the state of science 

 in England. When I look at the scene around me — when I see the way in 

 which our Sections are officered in so many instances by Cambridge men, not 

 out of mere compliment to the body which receives us, but for the intrinsic 

 merit of the men, and the pre-eminence which the general voice of society 

 accords them in their several departments — when I think of the large pro- 

 portion of the muster-roll of science which is filled by Cambridge names, and 

 when, without going into any details, and confining myself to only one 

 branch of public instruction, I look back to the vast and extraordinary deve- 

 lopment in the state of mathematical cultivation and power in this Univer- 

 sity, as evidenced both in its examinations and in the published work of its 

 members, now, as compared with what it was in my own time — I am left at 

 no loss to account for those triumphs and that influence to wliich I have 

 alluded. It has ever been, and I trust it ever will continue to be, the pride 

 and boast of this University to maintain, at a conspicuously high level, that 

 sound and thoughtful and sobering discipline of mind which mathematical 

 studies imply. Independent of the power which such studies confer as instru- 

 ments of investigation, there never was a period in the history of science in 

 which their moral influence, if I may so term it, was more needed, as a cor- 

 rective to that propensity which is beginning to prevail widely, and, I fear, 

 balefuUy, over large departments of our philosophy, the propensity to crude 

 and overbasty generalization. To all such propensities the steady concen- 

 tration of thought, and its fixation on the clear and the definite which a long 

 and stern mathematical discipline imparts, is the best, and, indeed, the only 

 proper antagonist. That such habits of thought exist, and characterize, in a 

 pre-eminent degree, the discipline of this University, with a marked influence 

 on the subsequent career of those who have been thoroughly imbued with it, 

 is a matter of too great notoriety to need proof. Yet, in illustration of this 

 disposition, I may be allowed to mention one or two features of its Scientific 

 History, which seem to me especially worthy of notice on this occasion. 

 Tlie first of these is the institution of the Cambridge University Philosophical 

 Society, that body at whose more especial invitation we are nowhere assem- 

 bled, which has now subsisted for more than twenty years, and which has 

 been a powerful means of cherishing and continuing those habits among 

 resident members of the University, after the excitement of reading for aca- 

 demical honours is past. From tliis society have emanated eight or nine 

 volumes of memoirs, full of variety and interest, and such as no similar col- 

 lection, originating as this has done in the bosom, and, in a great measure, 

 within the walls of an academical institution, can at all compare with ; the 

 Memoirs of the Ecole Polytecbnique of Paris, perhaps, alone excepted. 

 Without undervaluing any part of this collection, 1 may be allowed to par- 

 ticularize, as adding largely to our stock of knowledge of their respecti%'e 

 subjects, the Ilydrodynamical contributions of Prof. Challis — the Optical and 

 Photological papers of Mr. Airy — those of .Mr. Murphy, on Definite Integrals 

 — the curious speculations and intricate mathematical investigations of Mr. 

 Hopkins on Geological Dynamics — and, more recently, the papers of Mr. De 

 Morgan on the foundations of Algebra, which, taken in conjunction with the 

 prior researches of the Dean of Ely and Mr. Warren on the geometrical in- 

 terpretation of imaginary symbols in that science, have effectually dissipated 

 every obscurity which heretofore prevailed on this subject. The elucidation 

 of the metaphysical difficulties in question, by this remarkable train of spe- 

 culation, has, in fact, been so complete, that henceforward they will never be 

 named as difficulties, but only as illustrations of principle. Nor does its in- 

 terest end here, since it appears to have given rise to the theory of Quater- 

 nions of Sir W. Hamilton, and to the Triple Algebra of Mr. De .Morgan him- 

 self, as well as to a variety of interesting inquiries of a similar nature on the 



part of Mr. Graves, Mr. Cayley, and others. Conceptions of a novel and 

 refined kind have thus been introduced into analysis — new forms of imagi- 

 nary expression rendered familiar — and a vein opened which I cannot but 

 believe will terminate in some first-rate discovery in abstract science. 



Neither are inquiries into the logic of symbolic analysis, conducted as these 

 have been, devoid of a bearing on the jirogress even of physical science. 

 Every inquiry, indeed, has such a hearing which teaches us that terms which 

 we use in a narrow sphere of experience, as if we fully understood them, may, 

 as our knowledge of nature increases, come to have superadded to them a 

 new set of meaning and a wider range of interpretation. It is thus that 

 modes of action and communication, which we hardly yet feel prepared to 

 regard as strictly of a material character, may, ere many years have passed, 

 come to be familiarly included in our notions of Light, Heat, Electricity and 

 other agents of this class ; and that the transference of physical causation 

 from point to point in space— nay, even the generation or development of 

 attractive, repulsive or directive forces at their points of arrival may come to 

 be enumerated among their properties. The late marvellous discoveries in 

 actino-cbcmistry and the phenomena of muscular contraction as dependent 

 on the will, are, perhaps, even now preparing us for the reception of ideas 

 of this kind. 



Cambridge Mathematical Journal. 



Another instance of the eflicacy of the course of study in this university, in 

 producing not merely expert algebraists, but sound and original mcthematical 

 //lingers — (and, perhaps, a more striking one, from the generality of its con- 

 tributors being men of comparatively junior standing,) is to he found in the 

 pulilication of The Cambridge Ma/hema/ical Journal, of which already four 

 volumes, full of very original communications, are before the public. It was 

 set on foot in 1837, by the late Mr. Giiec;orv, Fellow of Trinity College, 

 whose premature death has bereft Science of one who, beyond a doubt, had 

 he lived, would have proved one of its chief ornaments, and the worthy re- 

 presentative of a family already so distinguished in the annals of mathema- 

 tical and optical science. Ilis papers on the ' Calculus of Operations,' which 

 appeared in that collection, fully justifies this impression, while they afford 

 an excellent illustration of my general position. Nor ouglit 1 to omit men- 

 tioning the Chemical Society, of whom he was among the founders, as indi- 

 cative of the spirit of the place, untrammelled by abstract forms, and eager 

 to spread itself over the whole field of human inquiry. 

 Cambridge Observatory. 



Another great and distinguishing feature in the scientific history of this 

 place, is the establjshmcnt of its Astronomical Observatory, and the regular 

 publication of the observations made in it. The science of Astronomy is so 

 vast, and its objects so noble, that its practical study for its own sake is quite 

 sufficient to insure its pur'uit wherever civilization exists. But such institu- 

 tions have a much wider influence than that which they exercise in forward- 

 ing their immediate object. Every astronomical observatory which publishes 

 its observations, becomes a nucleus for the formation around it of a school of 

 exact practice — a standing and accessible example of the manner in which 

 theories are brought to their extreme test — a centre, from which emanate a 

 continual demand for and suggestion of refinements and delicacies, and pre- 

 cautions in matters of observation and apparatus which re-act upon the whole 

 body of Science, and stimulate, while they tend to render possible an equal 

 refinement and precision in all its processes. It is impossible to speak too 

 highly of the mode in which the business of this institution is carried on 

 under its present eminent director — nor can it be forgotten in our apprecia- 

 tion of what it has done for science, than in it our prest-nt Astronomer-Koyal 

 first proved and familiarised himself with that admirable system of astrono- 

 mical observation, registry, and computation, which he has since brought to 

 perfection in our great national observatory, and which have rendered it, 

 under his direction, the pride and ornament of British Science, and the ad- 

 miration of Europe. 



Magnetic and Metereological Observatories. 

 Gentlemen, I should never have done if I were to enlarge on, or even at- 

 tempt to enumerate the many proofs which this university has afforded of its 

 determination to render its institutions and endowments efficient for the pur- 

 poses of public instruction, and available to science. But such encomiums, 

 however merited, must not be allowed to encroach too largely on other ob- 

 jects which I propose to bring before your notice, and which relate to the 

 more immediate business of the present meeting, and to the general interests 

 of science. The first and every way the most important, is the subject of the 

 Magnetic and Meteorological Observatories. Every member of this Asso- 

 ciation is, of course, aware of the great exertions which have been made 

 during the last five years, on the part of the British, Russian, and several 

 other foreign governments, and of our own East India Company, to furuish 

 data on the most extensive and systematic scale, for elucidating the great 

 problems of Terrestrial Magnetism and Meteorology, by the establishment of 

 a system of observatories all over the world, in which the phenomena are 

 registered at instants strictly simultaneous, and at intervals of two hours 

 throughout both night and day. With the particulars of these national insti- 

 tutions, and of the multitude of local and private ones of a similar nature, 

 both in Europe, Asia, and America, working on the same concerted jdan, so 

 far as the means at their disposal enable them, I need not detain you : neither 

 need I enter into any detailed explanation of the system of Magnetic Surveys, 

 both by sea and land, which have been executed or are in progress, in con- 

 nexion with, and based upon the observations carried on at the fixed stations. 

 These things form the subject of Special Annual Reports, which the Com 



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