ADDRESS 



BY 



SIR J. WILLIAM DAWSON, 



C.M.G., M.A., LL.D., F.R.S., F.G.S., Principal and Vice-Chancellor 

 of McGill University, Montreal, Canada, 



PRESIDENT. 



Twenty-one years have passed away since the last meeting of the British 

 Association in this great central city of England. At the third Birming- 

 hana meeting — that of 1865 — I had the pleasure of being present, and had 

 the honour of being one of the Vice-Presidents of Section C. At that 

 meeting my friend John Phillips, one of the founders of the Association, 

 occupied the Presidential chair, and I cannot better introduce what I 

 have to say this evening than by the eloquent words in which he then 

 addressed you : — ' Assembled for the third time in this busy centre of 

 industrious England, amid the roar of engines and clang of hammers 

 where the strongest powers of nature are trained to work in the fairy 

 chains of art, how softly and fittingly falls upon the ear the accent of 

 Science, the friend of that art, and the guide of that industry ! Here 

 where Priestley analysed the air, and Watt obtained the mastery over 

 steam, it well becomes the students of nature to gather round the stan- 

 dard which they carried so far into the fields of knowledge. And when on 

 other occasions we meet in quiet colleges and academic halls, how gladly 

 welcome is the union of fresh discoveries and new inventions with the 

 solid and venerable truths which are there treasured and taught. Long 

 may such union last ; the fair alliance of cultivated thought and practical 

 skill ; for by it labour is dignified and science fertilised, and the condition 

 of human society exalted.' These were the words of a man who, while 

 ■earnest in the pursuit of science, was full of broad and kindly sympathy for 

 his fellow-men, and of hopeful confidence in the future. "We have but to 

 turn to the twenty Reports of this Association, issued since 1865, to see 

 the realisation of that union of science and art to which he so confidentlv 

 looked forward, and to appreciate the stupendous results which it has 



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