306 TRANSACTIONS OP SECTION A. 



Association itself, seeing that there have been three Astronomical Presidents of 

 the Association who had not been previously chosen to fill this chair. The neglect 

 is not confined to astronomy but extends, as some of us recently pointed out, to 

 the other sciences of observation; and we thought that, as a corollary, it would 

 be better for the Section to divide, in order that these sciences might not con- 

 tinue the struggle for existence in an atmosphere to which they were apparently 

 ill-suited. But the Section decided against the suggestion, and I have no inten- 

 tion of appealing against the decision. This explicit statement will, I trust, 

 suffice to prevent misunderstanding if I proceed to examine the possible causes 

 of neglect — for I cannot but regard the record as significant of some cause which 

 it will be well to recognise even if we cannot remove it. Personally 1 think the 

 cause is not far to seek, and my hope is to make it manifest; but as the state- 

 ment of it involves something in the nature of an accusation, I will beg leave to 

 make it as gently as possible by using the words of others, especially of those 

 against whom the mild accusation is to be made. 



Let me begin by quoting from the admirable Address — none the less admirable 

 because it was only one-quarter of the length to which we have become accus- 

 tomed — delivered by my late Oxford colleague, the Rev. Bartholomew Price, at 

 Oxford in I860, wherein he referred to the constitution of this Section as 

 follows : — 



The area of scientific research which this Section covers is very large, 

 larger perhaps than that of any other; and its subjects vary so much that 

 while to some of those who frequent this room certain papers may appear 

 dull, yet to others they will be full of interest. Some of them possess, pro- 

 bably in the highest degree attainable by the human intellect, the characteris- 

 tics of perfect and necessary science ; while others are at present little more 

 than a conglomeration of observations, made indeed with infinite skill and 

 perseverance, and of the greatest value : capable probably in time of 

 greater perfection, nay, perhaps of the most perfect forms, but as yet in 

 their infancy, scarcely indicating the process by which that maturity will 

 be arrived at and containing hardly the barest outline of their ultimate laws. 



A little later in the Address Professor Price made it quite clear which were 

 the sciences 'in their infancy' : — 



And finally we come to the facts of meteorology and its kindred .subjects, 

 many of which are scarcely yet brought within any law at all. 



There is here much that will command ready and universal assent; but is 

 there not also a rather unnecessary social scale? The science of planetary move- 

 ment had not yet been ' brought within any law at all ' (as we now use the term) 

 in Tycho Brahe's time ; but was the astronomy of Tycho Brahe socially inferior 

 to that of Kepler? It is difficult to fix the eye on such a question without its 

 being caught by the splendour of Newton towering so near; and the idea 

 of a scale descending from that great height is almost irresistibly suggested. But 

 in spite of this grave difficulty, I ask whether there is of necessity any drop 

 whatever from the plane of Kepler, who realised the laws, to that of Tycho, who 

 never reached any suspicion of the true laws, but had nevertheless such faith in 

 their existence that he cheerfully devoted his life to labours of which he never 

 reaped the fruits ? Is it not a dangerous doctrine that the work done previous 

 to the formulation of a law is in any way inferior? Take the case of a man 

 like Stephen Groombridge, who made thousands of accurate observations of stars 

 in the early part of last century. Fifty years later something of the value of 

 his work began to emerge from a comparison with later observations which 

 showed what stars had moved and how ; but it was not until nearly a century 

 had elapsed that something about the laws of stellar movement was extracted 

 from his patient work, combined with a repetition of similar works at Greenwich. 

 Then, with the skilful assistance of Mr. Dyson and Mr. Eddington, Groom- 

 bridge at last came into the fruits of his labours; but had he been asked during 

 his lifetime for credentials in the shape of laws, on pain of being classed as an 

 inferior in the social scientific scale, he would have been lamentably unprepared. 

 Or consider the case of M. Teisserenc de Bort, when he began sending up his 

 balloons. 'Show me your laws,' cries the mathematician. 'But they are just 



