464 



NATURE 



[September 12, 1895 



This new departure afforded a means for ascertaining the ad- 

 \-antages and disadNiintages of the several varieties of scientific 

 instruments ; as well as for standardising and testing instruments, 

 not only for instrument-makers, but especially for observers by 

 whom simultaneous obserx-ations were then being carried on in 

 different parts of the world ; and also for training observers 

 proceeding abroad on scientific expeditions. 



Its special object was to promote oriirinal research, and ex- 

 penditure was not to be incurred on apparatus merely intended 

 to exhibit the necessary consequences of known laws. 



The rapid strides in electrical science had attracted attention 

 to the measurement of electrical resistances, and in 1859 the 

 British Association appointed a special committee to devise a 

 standard. The standard of resistance proposed by that com- 

 mittee became the generally accepted standard, until the re- 

 quirements of that advancing science led to the adoption of an 

 international standard. 



In 1S66 the Meteorological Department of the Board of 

 Trade entered into close relations with the Kew Observatory. 



.•\nd in 1871 Mr. Gasslot transferred ;^io,ooo upon trust to 

 the Royal Society for the maintenance of the Kew Observatory, 

 for the purpose of assisting in carrying on magnetical, meteoro- 

 logical, and other physical observations. The British Association 

 thereupon, after having maintained this Observatory for nearly 

 thirty years, at a total expenditure of about ;f 12,000, handed 

 the Observatory over to the Royal Society. 



The Traiitactiom of the British .\ssociation are a catalogue of 

 its efforts in every branch of science, both to promote experi- 

 mental research and to facilitate the application of the results to 

 the practical uses of life. 



But proliably the marvellous development in science which 

 has accom|ianied the life-history of the Association will be best 

 appreciated by a brief allusion to the condition of some of the 

 branches of science in 1831 as compared wi'.h their present 

 state. 



r.KOIOCKM AND GeOCRAPIIIiAI. Sclf;NCE. 



Gtology. 



At the foundation i>l the Association geology was assuming a 

 prominent position in science. The main features of English 

 geology had been illustrated as far back as 1S21, and, among 

 the founders of the British .Vssociation, Murchison and Phillips, 

 Buckland, Sedgwick and Conybeare, Lyell and I)e la Beche, 

 were occupied in investigating the data necessary for perfecting 

 a geological chronology by the detailed observations of the 

 various British deposits, anel by their co-relation with the con- 

 tinental strata. They were thus preparing the way for those 

 large generalisations which have raised geology to the rank of 

 an inductive science. 



In 1831 the Ordnance maps published for the southern coun- 

 ties had enabled the Government to recognise the importance of 

 a geological survey by the appointment of Mr. I)e la Beche to 

 affix geolfjgical colours to the maps of Devonshire and portions 

 of Somerset, Dorset and Cornwall ; and in 1835, Lyell, Buck- 

 land and Sedgwick induced the Government to establish the 

 Geolfjgical .Survey Department, not only for promoting geological 

 science, but on account of its [iractical bearing on iigriculture, 

 mining, the making of ri^ds, railways, and canals, and on other 

 branches of national indu.stry. 



Geography. 



The Ordnance Survey ap|)ears to have had its origin in a pro- 

 positi of the Krench Government to make a jointmeasuremcnl 

 of an arc of the meridian. This proposal (ell through at the 

 outbreak of the Revolution ; but the measurement of the base 

 for that object was taken as a foundation for a national survey. 

 In 1831, however, the Ordnance Survey had only published the 

 I -inch map for the sfiulhern portion of England, and the great 

 Irinngulation of the kingdom was still incomplete. 



In 1834 the British Avsocialion urged u|)on the Government 

 Ih ■ ' ' nl of various branches of science was greatly 



1' ii of an accurate map of the whole of the 



1'.: >ii '•onsequently, the engineer and meteoro- 



l<'. id the geologist, were each fettered m 



111' I Mins by the absence of those accurate 



dal.j wliicli lion lie ready to his hand for the mca.suremcnt of 

 fcngth, of surface, anri of altitiifle. 



Vet the fir 1 ' f ihe British . Vssociation was coincident 

 with a C'insi'l pinent of geographical research. The 



Association u .;. , ..t in pressing on the Government the 



NO. 1350, VOL. 52] 



scientific importance of sending the expedition of Ross to the 

 Antarctic and of Franklin to the .Arctic regions. We may 

 trust that we are approaching a solution of the geograpliy of tlie 

 North Pole ; but the Antarctic regions still present a field for the 

 researches of the meteorologist, the geologist, the biologist, 

 and the magnetic observer, which the recent voyage of M. 

 Borchgrevink leads us to hope may not long remain unexplored. 



In the same decade the question of an alternative route ti> 

 India by means of a communication between the Mediterranean 

 and the Persian Gulf was also receiving attention, and in 1835 

 the (iovernnient employed Colonel Chesney to make a survey of 

 the Euphrates valley in order to ascertain whether that river 

 would enable a practicable route to be formed from Iskanderoon, 

 or Tripoli, opposite Cyprus, to the Persian Gulf His valuable 

 surveys are not, however, on a sufficiently extensive scale to 

 enable an opinion to be formed as to whether a navigable water- 

 way through Asia Minor is physically practicable, or whether 

 the cost of establishing it might not be prohibitive. 



The advances of Russia in Central Asia have made il impera- 

 tive to provide an easy, rapid, anil alternative line of communi- 

 cation with our Eastern possessions, so as not to be dependent 

 upon the Sue/. Canal in time of war. If a navigation cannot 

 be est.iblished, a railway between the Mediterranean and the 

 Persian Gulf has been shown by the recent investigations of 

 Messrs. I lawkshaw and 1 layter, following on those of others, to 

 be perfectly practicable and easy of accomplishment ; such an 

 undertaking would not only be of strategical value, but it is 

 believed it would be commercially remunerative. 



Speke and Grant brought before the .\ssociation, at its meet- 

 ing at Newcastle in 1863, their solution of the mystery of the 

 Nile basin, which had puzzled geographers from the days of 

 Herodotus; and the efforts of Livingstone and Stanley and 

 others have opened out to us the interior of Africa. I cannot 

 refrain here from expressing the deep regret which geologists and 

 geographers, and indeed all who are inlereste<l in the progress of 

 discovery, feel at the recent death of Joseph Thomson. His 

 extensive, accurate, and trustworthy observations added much to 

 our knowledge of .\frica, and by his premature death we have 

 lost one of its most competent explorers. 



CiiEMicAi., Astronomical and Physical Science. 

 Chemistry. 



The report made to the Association on the slate of the 

 chemicil sciences in 1832, says that the efforts of investigators 

 were then being directed to determining with accuracy the true 

 nature of the substances which compose the various products of 

 the organic and inorganic kingdoms, and the exact ratios by 

 weight which the different constituents of these substances bear 

 to each other. 



But since that day the science of chemistry has far extended 

 its boundaries. The barrier has vanished which was supjMSed to 

 separate the products of living organisms from the substances of 

 which minerals consist, or which could 1)e formed in the labora- 

 tory. The number of distinct carbon comjiounds obtainable 

 from organisms has greatly increased ; but it is small when com- 

 pared with the number of such compounds wliiih have been 

 artificially formed. The methods of analysis have liecn per- 

 fected. The physical, and especially the optical, properties of 

 the various forms of matter have been closely studied, and many 

 fruitful generalisations have been made. The form in which 

 these generalis.ations would now be staled may proliably ch.inge, 

 some, iierhaps, by the overthrow or disuse of an ingenious guess 

 at nature's workings, but more by that change which is the 

 ordinary growth of science — namely, inclusion in some simpler 

 and more general view. 



In lliese advances the chemist has called the spectroscope to 

 his aid. Indeed, the existence of the British .\ssociation has 

 been practically coterminous with the comparatively newly de- 

 veloped science of spectrum analysis, for though Newton,' 

 Wollaslon, I'r.iunhofer, and lox Talliot had woikcd al the sub- 

 ject long ago, il was not till Kirchhoff and liunsen set a seal on 

 Ihe prior labours of Stokes, Angstnim, and Balfour Stewart 

 that the spectra of terrestrial elements have been mapped out and 

 grouped ; that by its help new elements have been discovered, 



1 Jo.inncs Marcu»i Marci, of Kroiil.ind in Ilolicmin, was Ific only prede- 

 cessor of Newton who Iiatl any Icnowledgc of the formation of a spirctnim by 

 a prism. He not only uMscrvcti tliat the coloured rays diverged as they left 

 tlie prism, liut tfiat a coloured ray did not change in colour after trans- 

 mission liirouKli a prism. His Itook, Thaumanttns^ lil'er tic arm (irlcsti 

 lietfuc (nlorvm nfififtrrtitiiim ttatura, Prag. 16^8, w.Ts, however, not known 

 to Newton, and had no influence upon future discoveries. 



