
262 

Col. Yule has been appointed president of Section E in the 
place of the late Dr. Johnston. Geological excursions are 
projected to East Lothian and the coast of Berwickshire, 
the latter under the guidance of Prof. Geikie ; a botanical 
excursion to the fertile collecting ground of Ben Ledi, 
in which Prof. Balfour will take part ; a dredging ex- 
pedition in the Frith of Forth ; and visits for antiquarians 
and the lovers of the picturesque to Melrose, Dryburgh, 
Abbotsford, and Rosslyn. With this tempting bill of 
fare, if the weather only proves moderately propi- 
tious, the meeting of the British Association in Edin- 
burgh must be an occasion to look bick upon with 
pleasure by all who are fortunate enough to be able to 
take pit in its proceedings. : 
INAUGURAL ADDREsS OF SIR WILLIAM THomson, LL.D., 
F.R.S., PRESIDENT 
For the third time of its forty years’ history the British Asso- 
ciation is assembled in the metropolis of Scotland. The origin 
of the Association is connected with Edinburgh in und:ing 
memory through the honoured names of Robison, Brewster, 
Forbes, and Johnston. 
In this place, from this chair, twenty-one vears ago, Sir David 
Brewster said :—‘‘ On the return of the British Association to 
the metropolis of Scotland, I am naturally reminded of the 
small band of pilgrims who carried the s2eds of this Institution 
into the more genial soil of our sister land.” . . . . «Sir 
John Robison, Prof, Johnston, and Prof. J. D. Forbes were 
the earliest friends and promoters of the British Association. 
They went to York to assist in it: establishment, and they found 
there the very men who were qualified to foster and organise it. 
The Rev. Mr. Vernon Harcourt, whose name cannot be men- 
tioned here without gratitude. had provided laws for its govern- 
ment, and, along with Mr. Phillips, the oldest and most valuable | 
of our office bearers, had mode all those arrangements by which 
its success was ensured. Headed by Sir Roderick Murchison, 
one of the very earliest and most active advocates of the Asso- 
ciation, there assembled at York about 200 of the friends of 
science.” 
The statement I have read contains no allusion to the real 
origin of the British Association. This blank in my predecessor's 
historical sketch I am able to fill in from words written by him- 
self twenty years earlier. Through the kindness of Prof. Phillips 
Iam enabled té read to you part of a letter to him at York, 
written by David Brewster from Allerly by Melrose, on the 23rd 
of February, 1831 :— 
**Dear Sir,—I have taken the liberty of writing you on a 
subject of considerable importance. It is proposed to establish 
a British Association of men of science similar to that which has 
existed for eight vears in Germany, and is now patronised by 
the most powerful Sovereigns of that part of Europe. The 
arrangements for the first meeting are in progress ; and it is con- 
templated that it shall be held in York, as the most central city 
for the three kingdoms. My object in writing you at present is 
to beg that you would ascertain if York will furnish the accom- 
modation necessary for so large a meeting (which may perhaps 
consist of above roo individuals). if the Philosophical Society 
would enter zealously into the plan, and if the Mayor and in- 
fluential persons in the town and in the vicinity would be likelv 
to promote its objects. The principal object of the Society 
would be to make the cultivators of science acquainted with 
each other, to stimulate one another to new exertions, and to 
bring the objects of science more before the public eye, and to 
take measures for advancing its interests and accelerating its 
progress.” 
Of the little band of four pilgrims from Scotland to York, not 
one now survives. Of the seven first associates one more has 
gone over to the majority since the Association last met. Vernon 
Harcourt is no longer with us; but his influence remains, a 
beneficent and surely therefore never dying influence. He was 
a geologist and chemist, a large-hearted lover of science, and 
an unwearied worker for its advancement. Brewster was the 
founder of the British Association ; Vernon Harcourt was its 
lawgiver. His code remains to this day the law of the Asso- 
ciation. 
On the 11th of May last Sir John Herschel died in the 
eigutieth year of his age. The name of Herschel is a household 
word throughout Great Britain and Ireland—yes, and through 
the whole civilised world. We of this generation have, from 
NATURE 

our lessons of childhood upwards, learned to see in Herschel, 
father and son, a presidium et dulce decus of the precious treasure 
of British scientific fame. When geography, astronomy, and the 
use of the globes were still taught, even to poor children, asa 
pleasant and profitable sequel to “reading, writing, and arith- 
metic,” which of us did not revere the great telescope of Sir 
William Herschel (one of the hundred wonders of the world), 
and learn with delight, directly or indirectly from the charming 
pages of Sir John Herschel’s book, about the sun and his spots, 
and the fiery tornadoes sweeping over his surface, and about the 
planets, and Jupiter’s belts, and Saturn’s rings, and the fixed stars 
with their proper motions, and the double stars, and coloured 
stars, and the nebulze discovered by the great telescope? Of 
Sir John Herschel it may indeed be said, w#/ tetigit quod non 
ornauit. 
A monument to Faraday and a monument to Herschel, 
Britain must have. The nation will not be satisfied with any 
thing, however splendid, done by private subscription. A 
national monument, the more humble in point of expense the 
better, is required to satisfy that honourable pride with which | 
a high-spirited nation cherishes the memory of its great men. 
But for the glory of Faraday or the glory of Herschel, is a 
monument wanted? No! 
What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones 
The labour of an age in piled stones? 
Or th « his hallowed relics should be hid 
Under a st «t-ypointing pyramid? 
Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, 
What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name? 
Thou, in our wonder and astonishment, 
Hast built thyself a live-long monument. 
And, so sepulchred, in such pomp dost lie, 
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die. 
With regard to Sir John Herschel’s scientific work, on the 
present occasion I can but refer briefly to a few points which seem 
to me salient in his physical and mathematical writings. First, 
I remark that he has put forward, most instructively and pro- 
fitably to his readers, the general theory of periodicity in dy- 
namics, and has urged the practical utilising of it, especially in 
meteorology, by the harmonic analysis. It is purely by an appli- 
cation of this principle and practical method, that the British 
Association’s Committee on Tides has for the last four years been, 
and stillis, working towards the solution of the grand problem 
proposed forty-eight years ago by Thomas Young in the following 
words :— 
‘* There is, indeed, little doubt that if we were provided with 
a sufficiently correct series of minutely accurate observations on 
the Tides, made not merely with a view to the times of low and 
high water only, but rather to the heights at the intermediate 
times, we might form by degrees, with the assistance of the theory 
contained in this article* only, almost as perfect a set of tables 
for the motions of the ocean as we have already obtained for 
those of the celestial bodies, which are the more immediate 
objects of the a tention of the pra. tical astronomer.” 
Sir John Herschel’s discovery of a right or left-handed asym- 
metry in the outward form of crystals, such as quartz, which in 
their inner molecular structure possess the helicoidal rotational 
property in reference to the plane of polarisation of lizht, is one 
of the notable points of meeting between Natural History and 
Natural Philosophy. His observations on ‘‘ epipolic dispersion ” 
gave Stokes the clue by which he was led to his great discovery 
of the change of periodic time experienced by light in alling on 
certain substances and being dispersively reflected from them. 
In respect to pure mathematics Sir John Herschel did more, I 
believe, than any other man to introduce into Britain the powerful 
methods and the valuable notation of modern analysis. A re- 
markable mode of symbolism had freshly appeared, I believe, in 
the works of Laplace, and possibly of other French mathemati- 
cians ; it certainly appeared in Fourier, but whether before or 
after Herschel’s work [ cannot say. With the French writers, 
however, this was rather ashort method of writing formulz than 
the analytical engine which it became in the hands of Herschel 
and British flowers, especially Sylvester and Gregory (com- 
petitors with Green in the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos 
struggle of 1837) and Boole and Cayley. This method was 
greatly advanced by Gregory, who first yave to its working-power 
a secure and philosophical foundation, and so prepared the way 
for the marvellous extension it has received from Boo le, Sylvester, 
* Young's; written in 1823 for the Supplement to the ‘Encyclopedia 
Britannica.” 


