4 PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 



when last we met here and have since gone from among us, leaving 

 their great deeds and their noble enthusiasm to inspire now and for all 

 future time those who have vowed themselves to the advancement of 

 science in this realm of Britain, 



There must be some here who had the privilege of personal acquaint- 

 ance with several of the men who founded this Association in York 

 seventy-five years ago. I myself knew Professor John Phillips, Sir 

 Charles Lyell, Sir Roderick Murchison, Sir David Brewster, Dr. 

 Whewell, and Mr. Harcourt of Nunehani. All these fathers of our 

 Association had passed away before our last meeting in York. And 

 now, in the quarter of a century which has rolled by and brought us here 

 again, we have lost many who took an active part in its annual meetings 

 and were familiar figures in the scientific world of the later Victorian 

 period. Huxley and Tyndall, Spottiswoode and Cayley, Owen and 

 Flower, AVilliamson and Frankland, Falconer and Busk, Prestwich and 

 Godwin- Austen, Rolleston and Henry Smith, Stokes and Tait, and many 

 others are in that list, including one whose name was, and is, more often 

 heard in our discussions than any other, though he himself never was able 

 to join us— I mean Charles Darwin. Happily some of the scientific 

 veterans of the nineteenth century are still living, if not with us in York. 

 Sir Joseph Hooker, who visited the Antarctic with Ross in 1839, is still 

 liale and hearty, and so are Alfred Russel Wallace, Lord Kelvin, Sir 

 William Huggins, and many others who were already veteran leaders in 

 scientific investigation when last we visited York : they are still active in 

 thought, observation, and experiment. 



In attempting to give an outline of the advancement of science in the 

 past twenty-five years I think it is necessary to distinguish two main 

 kinds of advancement, both of which our founders had in view. Francis 

 Bacon gave the title ' Advancement of Learning ' to that book in which 

 he explained not merely the methods by which the increase of knowledge 

 was possible, but advocated the promotion of knowledge to a new and 

 influential position in the organisation of human society. His purpose, 

 says Dean Church, was ' to make knowledge really and intelligently the 

 interest, not of the school or the study or the laboratory only, but of 

 society at large.' This is what our founders also intended by their use of 

 the word ' advancement.' So that in surveying the advancement of 

 scienceSin the past quarter of a century we of the British Association 

 must ask not only what are the new facts discovered, the new ideas and 

 conceptions which have come into activity, but what progress has science 

 made' in becoming really and intelligently the interest of society at large. 

 Is there evidence that there is an increase in the influence of science on 

 the lives of our fellow- citizens and in the great affairs of the State 1 Is 

 there an increased provision for securing the progress of scientific investi- 

 gation in proportion to the urgency of its need or an increased disposition 

 to secure the employment of really competent men trained in scientific 

 investigation for the public service 1 



