1851 BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT IPSWICH 129 



exchanging information. To this end they arrange 

 themselves into different sections, each with its own 

 president and committee, and indicated by letters. For 

 instance, Section A is for Mathematics and Physics ; 

 Section B for Chemistry, etc. ; my own section, that 

 of Natural History, was D, under the presidency of 

 Professor Henslow [ of Cambridge. I was on the com- 

 mittee, and therefore saw the working of the whole affair. 



On the first day there was a dearth of matter in our 

 section. People had not arrived with their papers. So 

 by way of finding out whether I could speak in public 

 or not, I got up and talked to them for about twenty 

 minutes. I was considerably surprised to find that 

 when once I had made the plunge, my tongue went 

 glibly enough. 



On the following day I read a long paper, which I 

 had prepared and illustrated with a lot of big diagrams, 

 to an audience of about twenty people ! The rest were 

 all away after Prince Albert, who had been unfortunately 

 induced to visit the meeting, and fairly turned the heads 

 of the good people of Ipswich. On Saturday a very 

 pleasant excursion on scientific pretences, but in fact a 

 most jolly and unscientific picnic, took place. Several 

 hundred people went down the Orwell in a steamer. 

 The majority returned, but I and two others, considering 

 Sunday in Ipswich an impossibility, stopped at a little 

 seaside village, Felixstowe, and idled away our time there 

 very pleasantly. Babington 2 the botanist and myself 

 walked in to Ipswich on Sunday night. It is about 

 eleven miles, and we did it comfortably in two hours 

 and three-quarters, which was not bad walking. 



1 John Stevens Henslow, 1796-1861, was professor first of 

 Mineralogy, then of Botany, at Cambridge, among his pupils being 

 Charles Darwin. In 1839 he accepted the living of Hitcham in 

 Suffolk, where, by means of a village club, he awakened interest in 

 scientific subjects, especially botany and agriculture. 



2 Charles Cardale Babington, 1808-1895, succeeded Henslow in 

 the Cambridge Chair of Botany, 1861. 



VOL. I K 



