156 POPULAR LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 



far as I know, no attempt has been made to follow 

 it in Britain. It is true that several of the annual 

 volumes of the Jahresbericht were translated ; but 

 a translation, published necessarily at a consider- 

 able interval of time after the original, cannot 

 supply the want. An independent British publica- 

 tion is for many obvious reasons desirable. The 

 two publications, in German and English, would, 

 both by their differences and by their agreements, 

 illustrate the progress of science more correctly 

 and usefully than any single work could do, even if 

 appearing simultaneously in the two languages. 

 It seems to me that to promote the establishment 

 of a British Year Book of Science is an object to 

 which the powerful action of the British Association 

 would be thoroughly appropriate. 



In referring to recent advances in several 

 branches of science, I simply choose some of those 

 which have struck me as most notable. 



Accurate and minute measurement seems to the 

 non-scientific imagination a less lofty and dignified 

 work than looking for something new. But nearly 

 all the grandest discoveries of science have been 



