THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. 3 



so ably described by Mr. Spottiswoode, at Dublin, and 

 are so well known to you, that I will not dwell on them 

 this evening. The excellent President of the Royal 

 Society, in the same address, suggested that the past 

 history of the Association would form an appropriate 

 theme for the present meeting. The history of the 

 Association, however, is really the history of science, 

 and I long shrank from the attempt to give even a 

 panoramic survey of a subject so vast and so difficult ; 

 nor should I have ventured to make any such attempt, 

 but that I knew I could rely on the assistance of friends 

 in every department of science. 



Certainly, however, this is an opportunity on which 

 it may be well for us to consider what have been the 

 principal scientific results of the last half-century, 

 dwelling especially on those with which this Associa- 

 tion is more directly concerned, either as being the work 

 of our own members, or as having been made known at 

 our meetings. I have, moreover, especially taken those 

 discoveries which the Royal Society has deemed worthy 

 of a medal. It is of course impossible within the 

 limits of a single address to do more than allude to a 

 few of these, and that very briefly. In dealing with so 

 large a subject I first hoped that I might take our 

 annual volumes as a text-book. This, however, I at 

 once found to be quite impossible. For instance, the 

 first volume commences with a Report on Astronomy, 

 by Sir G. Airy ; I may be pardoned, I trust, for ex- 

 pressing my pleasure at finding that the second was 

 one by my father, on the Tides, prepared like the pre- 

 ceding at the request of the Council ; then comes one 

 on Meteorology by Forbes ; Radiant Heat, by Baden 



B 2 



