OPENING ADDRESS. 5 



only portray in, as it were, living colours the history of science, we 

 should not only be paying just tribute to the memory of the great 

 men who have gone before us, but we should afford opportunities of 

 reverting to old lines of thought, of repeating with the identical instru- 

 ments important but half-forgotten experiments, of weaving together 

 threads of scattered researches, which could otherwise be taken up 

 again only with difficulty, and after an expenditure of much and 

 irretrievable time. 



Let me now turn for a moment to the other side of the picture. If 

 the collection in the midst of which we are here assembled is an 

 evidence of the valuable relics which still remain to us of the great 

 men who have passed away, the circumstances under which some of 

 them have found their way hither, and the vacant places due to the 

 absence of others, are no less evidence of how much the preservation 

 of such objects would be promoted by the establishment of a museum 

 such as I have ventured to suggest. Many circumstances contribute 

 to thrust into oblivion, or to put absolutely out of reach of future 

 recovery, original apparatus. First, the paramount importance and 

 immediate uses of an improved instrument or a new invention ; next, 

 in Government departments such as the Survey, the Post Office, 

 c., the imperative demands of the public service, which leave little or 

 no time for a retrospect of the past ; and if I may add a word from 

 the experience of private individuals, the pressing calls of space and 

 expense lead the possessors to throw away, or to utilise, by conversion 

 of the materials to new purposes, apparatus which has done its work. 

 I venture to particularise one or two considerations, which will 

 probably have occurred to many of you, but which appear to me to 

 illustrate the above remarks. In the case of the Ordnance Survey it is 

 almost certain that the current work of the department would neverhave 

 required, and it is doubtful whether any private interposition would 

 have brought about the removal of the disused instruments, here 

 exhibited, from the cellars at Southampton. Again, the Post Office 

 would hardly have been justified in devoting valuable time to the 

 arrangement, or valuable space to the storage, of instruments no longer 

 on active service, except at the call of a public department, or for st 

 public purpose. And surely it would be a matter of serious regret 

 that the time already spent upon the collections now before us should 



