Sept. 4, 1884] 



NA TURE 



439 



and the main lake at the junction of Lake Hazen and 

 Ruggles River I discovered the remains of permanent 

 Esquimaux huts. Many relics were obtained at that place 

 and at various points along the southern shore of Lake 

 Hazen, but no traces of any kind were found on the 

 northern shore of the lake. It is perhaps worthy of re- 

 mark that reindeer, which must have been plentiful in 

 that country, have entirely disappeared, having either 

 migrated or become extinct. In connection with the 

 line of perpetual snow I may state that on Mount Arthur 

 it was not far from 3500 feet above the sea. From baro- 

 metrical measurements it appeared that the crest of 

 Grinnell Land was above 2500 feet elevation in front of 

 the southern ice-cap, 3000 feet near Mount Arthur. 



THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION 



SO far as reports have reached us, the Montreal meet- 

 ing has been a brilliant success, at least from the 

 social point of view. The enthusiasm of the reception 

 by the Canadians could not have been greater, and that 

 enthusiasm, we are glad to notice, has met with a cordial 

 response from the Soo members of the Association who 

 went to Montreal. From the ample reports in the Times 

 it is evident that, notwithstanding the many outside at- 

 tractions devised by the hosts of the Association, the 

 work in the Sections has in quantity and quality been up 

 to the average. The proceedings began on Tuesday week 

 with an address from the Mayor and Corporation of Mon- 

 treal, and on Wednesday the Governor-General, Lord 

 Lansdowne, welcomed the Association in a warm speech, 

 in which the right keynote was struck. " If," he said, "you 

 selected within the British Colonial Empire a spot for 

 your meeting, you could not have selected a colony which 

 better deserved this distinction either in respect of 

 warmth of affection for the mother country, or the desire 

 of its inhabitants for the diffusion of knowledge and cul- 

 ture. In a young country such pursuits are conducted 

 in the face of difficulties, competition with material ac- 

 tivity necessarily absorbing the attention of a rapidly 

 developing community. We may claim for Canada that 

 she has done her best, and has spared no pains to provide 

 for the interests of science in the future. She has scien- 

 tific workers known and respected far beyond the bounds 

 of their own nation." Lord Lansdowne spoke warmly of 

 the honour conferred upon Principal Sir John Dawson, 

 who is more responsible than any other single person for 

 the Association's visit. "We regard," he said, "the knight- 

 hood Her Majesty has bestowed upon him as an appro- 

 priate recognition of his distinguished services, and an 

 opportune compliment to Canadian science. But the 

 significance of this meeting is far greater than if mea- 

 sured merely by the addition it will make to the Empire's 

 scientific wealth. When we find a society which for fifty 

 years has not met outside the British Islands transferring 

 its operations to the Dominion ; when we see several 

 hundred of the best-known Englishmen arriving here, 

 mingling with our citizens and dispersing over this con- 

 tinent ; when we see in Montreal the bearers of such 

 names as Rayleigh, Playfair, Frankland, Sanderson, 

 Thomson, Roscoe, Blanford, Moseley, Lefroy, Temple, 

 Bramwell, Tylor, Galton, Harcourt, and Bonney, we feel 

 one more step has been taken towards the establishment 

 of that closer intimacy between the mother country and 

 her offspring which both here and at home all good 

 citizens of the Empire are determined to promote." 



In introducing Lord Rayleigh as President, Sir William 

 Thomson said : — 



" It would have been a well-earned pleasure for my 

 friend Prof. Cayley had li2 been able to visit Montreal, 

 to introduce Lord Rayleigh to-night as his successor in 

 the office of President of the British Association. Prof. 

 Cayley has devoted his life to the advancement of pure 



mathematics, and it is peculiarly appropriate that he 

 should be followed in his honourable post by one who has 

 made the brilliant applications of mathematical power to 

 the discovery and illustration of natural phenomena with 

 which Lord Rayleigh has enriched physical science. 

 Lord Rayleigh's optical researches are of great value — 

 notably his profound and searching mathematical investi- 

 gation of the blue sky and the polarisation of light by 

 reflection. His book on ' Sound ' is the greatest and 

 most important work which has yet appeared on the 

 subject. His determination of the ohm, which constitutes 

 the accurate foundation for the great modern science of 

 electrical measurement, is of supreme importance not only 

 in the scientific laboratory but in all practical applications 

 of electricity, as in the telegraph cable factory and the 

 signalling station, in electrical engineering works, in every 

 practical application of electric light, electro-metallurgy, 

 and the electrical transmission of power. With much 

 pleasure I resign the chair for Prof. Cayley, and introduce 

 Lord Rayleigh as President of the British Association." 



The Royal Society of Canada presented an address of 

 welcome to the Association, and the American Associa- 

 tion sent a cordial invitation to the members to attend the 

 meeting at Philadelphia. Over 200 were to go, leaving 

 Montreal by special train this morning. 



A brilliant reception was given on Thursday night by 

 the Governors, Principal, and Professors of McGill Uni- 

 versity, and Saturday was devoted entirely to excursions. 

 Prof. Lodge's lecture on "Dust" on Friday night was 

 both scientific and practical, and appears to have been a 

 great success. He did well to speak strongly to a practical 

 people of the rewards of pure scientific research, though 

 we trust that one result of the meeting will be to open 

 the eyes of the Canadians to the utility of substantially 

 encouraging such research. 



One of the most notable incidents of the meeting seems 

 to have been the reception given to Prof. Asa Gray in the 

 Biological Section, where he read a paper on North 

 American botany, one of the most remarkable papers, 

 Prof. Moseley stated, ever read in that Section. When 

 Prof. Gray rose to reply, he received a perfect ovation. 



The Corporation of McGill University, in commemora- 

 tion of the British Association meeting at Montreal, were 

 to confer, at the closing meeting yesterday, the honorary 

 degree of LL.D. upon the following prominent repre- 

 sentatives of science : — The President, Lord Rayleigh ; 

 the following Vice-Presidents : the Governor-General, 

 Lord Lansdowne ; Sir John A. Macdonald, Sir Lyon 

 Playfair, and Prof. Frankland ; the General Secre- 

 taries, Capt. Douglas Galton and Mr. A. G. Vernon 

 Harcourt ; the Secretary, Prof. Bonney ; the Sectional 

 Presidents, Sir William Thomson, Sir Henry Ros- 

 coe, Mr. W. T. Blanford, Prof. Moseley, General Sir J. 

 H. Lefroy, Sir Richard Temple, Sir Frederick Bramwell, 

 and Dr. E. B. Tylor ; also upon Prof. Daniel Wilson, 

 President of Toronto University and the leading Canadian 

 archaeologist ; Prof. Asa Gray of Harvard, the leading 

 American botanist ; and Prof. James Hall, the State 

 Geologist of New York. 



Lieut. Greely made his appearance in the Geographical 

 Section on Tuesday, and gave a detailed account of the 

 geographical and scientific results of his recent Arctic 

 expedition. His paper, however, was no mere sensation ; 

 what he told the meeting of the condition of Grinnell 

 Land is of real scientific value. On another page will be 

 found the report of Lieut. Greely's paper. 



One practical result of the Montreal meeting is that the 

 Association will offer a gold medal in the Department 

 of Applied Science in McGill University as a memento 

 of the visit. Moreover, Mr. Blanford proposed in the 

 Geological Section that as some return for the way in 

 which they had been received the members should con- 

 tribute for the formation of science scholarships in McGill 

 College. 



