470 



NA TURE 



[September t2, 1901 



kistvaens, while independent archaeologists are, by Government 

 order, forbidden to open any old graves unless they are willing 

 to make over to the Museum all their finds and bear their own 

 expenses. The lapse of time and eiifecls of weather greatly tend 

 to diminish the remains of the old people in the sites they 

 occupied. The action of the plough in many cases, and the 

 trampling of herds of cattle in others, are active elements of 

 destruction of pottery buried near the surface, and even of stone 

 implements. These remarks apply with equal force to the old 

 sites of the early iron age folk, both residential and sepulchral. 



Mr. Foote further states in his " Catalogue of the Prehistoric 

 Antiquities " in the Government Museum at Madras, that a 

 full and exhaustive prehistoric survey of the country should be 

 made by a really competent specialist, who shall be a geologist 

 and an osteologist as well as a trained archaeologist, and not a 

 mere architectural surveyor. A knowledge of Sanskrit will be 

 of no use in deciding as to the sources whence were derived the 

 many foreign rocks and minerals found in the many old resi- 

 dential sites, which, up to date, have had only their surfaces 

 examined, but which, doubtless, in many cases will yield rich 

 finds to the careful excavator, who must be a man having the 

 power to devote time to his work. A. C. ffADDON. 



Cambridge, September 3. 



THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT GLASGOW. 



IN the previous articles, which appeared in Nature, 

 May 23, July 18, and August 22, particulars were 

 given as to the local arrangements for the meeting in 

 Glasgow, and a forecast of the papers to be read at the 

 sectional meetings was published. The president. Prin- 

 cipal A. W. Rucker, delivered his presidential address, 

 which we print in this issue, as we went to press yesterday, 

 and the business of the sections commenced this morning. 

 A large number of British leading men of science are 

 present at the meeting, and many well-known men of 

 science are also present from abroad. Among others, the 

 following are attending the meeting : — Prof. L. Kny, 

 Berlin ; Prof. George Quincke, Heidelberg ; Prof. G. 

 Mittag-Leffler, Stockholm ; Dr. Gustav Cassil, Copen- 

 hagen ; Prof. A. F. Renard, Ghent ; Prof. Gustave 

 Gilson, Louvain ; Mr. A. Laurence Rotch, Readville, 

 Mass., U.S.A. ; Prof. R. H. Thurston, Cornell Uni- 

 versity ; Dr. T. P. Lotsy, Arnheim, Holland ; Dr. 

 Theodor Beer, Menna ; Prof. J. J. Mackenzie, Toronto ; 

 Prof. E. W. Morley, Cleveland, Ohio ; Prof. Joji Sakurai, 

 Tokyo ; His Excellency Don Arturo de Marcoartu, 

 Bilbao ; Prof. J. P. McMurrick, Michigan ; Dr. V. 

 Crdmieu, Paris ; Prof. Dr. W. Marikwald, Berlin ; Prof. 

 Paul Walden, Riga ; Prof. Goebel, Munich ; Dr. C. E. 

 Guillaume, Sevres ; Dr. Conventz, Danzig ; Baron 

 Varilla, Paris ; Mr. Edward Atkinson, Brooklyn ; Prof. 

 Anitchkoff, Russia. 



The meeting promises to be a successful one, both from 

 the point of view of numbers and that of scientific 

 interest. 



Inaugural Address by Prof. Arthur W. Rucker- 

 M.A., LL.D., D.Sc, Sec.R.S., President of the 

 Association. 



The first thought in the minds of all of us to-night is that 

 since we met last year the great Ijueen, in whose reign nearly 

 all the meetings of the British Association have been held, has 

 passed to her rest. 



To Sovereigns most honours and dignities come as of right ; 

 but for some of them is reserved the supreme honour of an old 

 age softened by the love and benedictions of millions ; of a path 

 to the grave, not only magnificent, but watered by the tears 

 both of their nearest and dearest, and of those who, at the most, 

 have only seen them from afar. 



This honour (Jueen Victoria won. All the world knows by 

 what great abilities, by what patient labour, by what infinite 

 tact and kindliness, the late (Jueen gained both the respect of 

 the rulers of nations and the afiection of her own subjects. 



Her reign, glorious in many respects, was remarkable, outside 

 these islands, for the growth of the Empire ; within and without 

 them, for the drawing nearer of the Crown and the people in 



NO. 1663, VOL. 64] 



mutual trust ; while, during her lifetime, the developments of 

 science and of scientific industry have altered the habits and the 

 thoughts of the whole civilised world. 



The representatives of science ha%'e already expressed in more 

 formal ways their sorrow at the death of Queen Victoria, and 

 the loyalty and confident hope for the future with which they 

 welcome the accession of King Edward. But none the less, I 

 feel sure that at this, the first meeting of the British Association 

 held in his reign, I am only expressing the universal opinion of 

 all our members when I say that no group of the King's subjects 

 trusts more implicitly than we do in the ability, skill, and judg- 

 ment which His Majesty has already shown in the exercise of the 

 powers and duties of his august office ; that none sympathise 

 more deeply with the sorrows which two great nations have 

 shared with their Sovereigns ; and that none cry with more 

 fervour, " Long live the King !" 



But this meeting of the British Association is not only re- 

 markable as being the first in a new reign. It is also the first in a 

 new century. It is held in Glasgow at a time when your In- 

 ternational Exhibition has in a special sense attracted the atten- 

 tion of the world to your city, and when the recent celebration 

 of the ninth jubilee of your University has shown how deeply 

 the prosperity of the present is rooted in the past. What wonder, 

 then, if I take the Chair to which you have called me with 

 some misgivings ? Born and bred in the South, I am to preside 

 over a meeting held in the largest city of Scotland. As your 

 chosen mouthpiece I am to speak to you of science when we 

 stand at the parting of the centuries, and when the achieve- 

 ments of the past and present, and the promise of the future, 

 demand an interpreter with gifts of knowledge and divination 

 to which I cannot pretend. Lastly, I am President of the 

 British Association as a disciple in the home of the master, as a 

 physicist in a city which a physicist has made for ever famous. 

 Whatever the future may have in store for Glasgow, whether 

 your enterprise is still to add wharf to wharf, factory to factory, 

 and street to street, or whether some unforeseen " tide in the 

 affairs of men " is to sweep energy and success elsewhere, fifty- 

 three years in the history of your city will never be forgotten 

 while civilisation lasts. 



More than half a century ago, a mere lad was the first to 

 compel the British Association to listen to the teaching of Joule, 

 and to accept the law of the conservation of energy. Now, alike 

 in the most difficult mathematics and in the conception of the 

 most ingenious apparatus, in the daring of his speculations and 

 in the soundness of his engineering, William Thomson, Lord 

 Kelvin, is regarded as a leader by the science and industry of the 

 whole world. 



It is the less necessary to dwell at length upon all that he has 

 done, for Lord Kelvin has not been without honour in his own 

 country. Many of us, who meet here to-night, met last 'in 

 Glasgow when the University and City had invited representa- 

 tives of all nations to celebrate the Jubilee of his professorship. 

 For those two or three days learning was surrounded with a 

 pomp seldom to be seen outside a palace. The strange middle- 

 age costumes of all the chief Universities of the world were 

 jostling here, the outward signs that those who were themselves 

 distinguished in the study of Nature had gathered to do honour 

 to one of the most distinguished of them all. 



Lord Kelvin's achievements were then described in addresses 

 in every tongue, and therefore I will only remind you that we, 

 assembled here to-night, owe him a heavy debt of gratitude ;for 

 the fact that the British Association enters on the twentieth 

 century conscious of a work to do and of the vigour to do it is 

 largely due to his constant presence at its meetings and to the 

 support he has so ungrudgingly given. We have learned to 

 know, not only the work of our great leader, but the man him- 

 self : and I count myself happy because in his life-long home, 

 under the walls of the University he served so well, and at a 

 meeting of the Association which his genius has so often illu- 

 minated, I am allowed, as your President, to .assure him in your 

 name of the admiration, respect, nay, of the affection, in which 

 we all hold him. 



I have already mentioned a number of circumstances which 

 make our meeting this year noteworthy ; to these I must add 

 that for the first time we have a Section for Education, and the 

 importance of this new departure, due largely to the energy of 

 Prof Armstrong, is emphasised by the fact that the Chair of 

 that Section will be occupied by the Vice-President of the Com- 

 mittee of Council on Education— Sir John Gorst. I will not 

 attempt to forecast the proceedings of the new Section. Eduea- 



