2 REPORT — 1881. 



1831, tlio chair being occnpied by Lord Milton, who delivered an address, 

 after wliicli Mr. "William Vernon Harcouvt, Chairman of the Committee 

 of Management, submitted to the meeting a code of rules which had 

 been so maturely considered, and so wisely framed, that they have re- 

 mained substantially the same down to the present day. 



Of those who organised and took part in that first meeting, few, alas ! 

 remain. Bi-ewster and Phillips, Harcourt and Lord Milton, Lyell and 

 Murchison, all have passed away, but their memories live among us. 

 Some few, indeed, of those present at our first meeting we rejoice to see 

 here to-day, including one of the five members constituting the original 

 organising Committee, our venerable Vice-President, Archdeacon Creyke. 

 The constitution and objects of the Association were so ably de- 

 scribed by Mr. Spottiswoode, at Dublin, and are so well known to you, 

 that I will not dwell on them this evening. The excellent President of 

 the Royal Society, in the same address, suggested that the past history 

 of the Association would form an appi'opriate theme for the present 

 meeting. The history of the Association, however, is really the history 

 of science, and I long shrank from the attempt to give even a pano- 

 ramic survey of a subject so vast and so difficnlt ; nor should I have 

 ventured to make any such attempt, but that I knew I could rely on the 

 assistance of friends in every department of science. 



Certainly, however, this is an opportunity on which it may be well 

 for us to consider what have been the principal scientific results of the 

 last half-centnry, dwelling especially on those Avith which this Association 

 is more directly concerned, either as being the work of our own members, 

 or as having been made known at our meetings. I have, moreover, 

 especially taken those discoveries which the Royal Society has deemed 

 worthy of a medal. It is of course impossible within the limits of a single 

 address to do more than allude to a few of these, and that very briefly. 

 In dealing with so large a subject I first hoped that I might take our 

 annual volumes as a text-book. This, however, I at once found to be 

 quite impossible. For instance, the first volume commences with a 

 Report on Astronomy by Sir G. Airy ; I may be pardoned, I trust, for 

 expressing my pleasure at finding that the second was one by my father, 

 on the Tides, prepared like the preceding at the request of the Council, 

 then comes one on Meteorology by Forbes, Radiant Heat by Baden Powell, 

 Optics by Brewster, Mineralogy by Whewell, and so on. My best course 

 will therefore be to take our different Sections one by one, and endea- 

 vour to bring before you a few of the principal results which have been 

 obtained in each department. 



The Biological Section is that with which I have been most intimately 

 associated, and with which it is, perhaps, natural that I should begin. 



Fifty years ago it was the general opinion that animals and plants 

 came into existence just as we now see them. We took pleasure in 

 their beauty ; their adaptation to their habits and mode of life in many 



