* ADDRESS 



OF 



JOHN PHILLIPS, 



M.A. OXOST.; LL.D. DUBLIN; F.E.S.; F.G.S.; ETC. 



Assembled for the third time in this busy centre of industrious England, 

 amid the roar of engines and the clang of hammers, where the strongest 

 powers of nature are trained to work in the fairy chains of art, how softly 

 falls upon the ear the accent of Science, the friend of that art, and the 

 guide of that industry ! Here, where Priestley analyzed the air, and Watt 

 obtained the mastery over steam, it well becomes the students of nature to 

 gather round the standard which they carried so far into the fields of know- 

 ledge. And when, on other occasions, we meet in quiet colleges and Aca- 

 demic 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 fertilized, and the 

 condition of human society exalted ! 



Through this happy combination of science and art, the young life of the 

 British Association — one-third of a century — has been illustrated by disco- 

 veries and enriched by useful inventions in a degree never surpassed. How 

 else could we have gained that knowledge of the laws of nature which has 

 added to the working strength of a thousand millions of men the mightier 

 power of steam *, extracted from the buried ruins of primeval forests their 

 treasured elements of heat and light and colour, and brought under the con- 

 trol of the human finger, and converted into a messenger of man's gentlest 

 thoughts, the dangerous mystery of the lightning f ? 



How many questions have we asked — not always in vain — regarding the 

 constitution of the earth, its history as a planet, its place in creation ; — now 

 probing with sharpened eyes the peopled space around — peopled with a thou- 

 sand times ten thousand stars ; — now floating above the clouds in colder and 

 clearer air; — now traversing the polar ice — the desert sand— the virgin 

 forest — the unconquered mountain ; — now sounding the depths of the ocean, 

 or diving into the dark places of the earth. Everywhere curiosity, every - 



* The quantity of coal dug in Great Britain in the year 1864 appears by the returns of 

 Mr. E. Hunt to have been 92,787,873 tons. This would yield, if employed in steam- 

 engines of good construction, an amount of available force about equal to that of the 

 whole human race. But in the combustion of coal not less than ten times this amount of 

 force is actually set free — nine-tenths being at present unavailable, according to the state- 

 ment of Sir William Armstrong, in his Address to the Meeting at Newcastle in 1863. 



t The definite magnetic effect of an electrical current was the discovery of Oersted in 

 1819 ; Cooke and Wheatstone's patent for an Electric Telegraph is dated in 1837 ; the first 

 message across the Atlantic was delivered in 1858. Tantse mobs erat. 



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