ADDKESS. 5 



that occasion converted into heat may, I think, be inferred from the 

 mutual distance which the two bodies have since maintained. Whereas 

 the visit of 1832 was succeeded by another visit in fifteen years, and the 

 visit of 1847 was succeeded by another visit in tliirteen years, the year 

 1860 was followed by a long and dreary interval of separation, which has 

 only now, after four-and-thirty years, been terminated. It has required 

 the lapse of a generation to draw the curtain of oblivion over those 

 animated scenes. It was popularly supposed that deep divergences upon 

 questions of religion were the motive force of those high controversies. 

 To some extent that impression was correct. But men do not always 

 discern the motives which are really urging them, and I suspect that in 

 many cases religious apprehensions only masked the resentment of the 

 older learning at the appearance and claims of its younger rival. In any 

 case there is something worthy of note, and something that conveys 

 encouragement, in the difference of the feeling which prevails now and 

 the feeling that was indicated then. Few men are now influenced by the 

 strange idea that questions of religious belief depend on the issues of 

 physical research. Few men, whatever their creed, would now seek their 

 geology in the books of their religion, or, on the other hand, would fancy 

 that the laboratory or the microscope could help them to penetrate the 

 mysteries which hang over the nature and the destiny of the soul of man. 

 And the old learning no longer contests the share in education which is 

 claimed by the new, or is blind to the supreme influence which natural 

 knowledge is exercising in moulding the human mind. 



A study of the addresses of my learned predecessors in this office 

 shows me that the main duty which it falls to a President to perform in 

 his introductory address, is to remind you of the salient points in the 

 annals of science since last the Association visited the town in which he 

 is speaking. Most of them have been able to lay before you in all its 

 interesting detail the history of the particular science of which each one 

 of them was the eminent representative. If I were to make any such 

 attempt I should only be telling you with very inadequate knowledge a 

 story which is from time to time told you, as well as it can be told, by 

 men who are competent to deal with it. It will be more suitable to my 

 capacity if I devote the few observations I have to make to a survey not 

 of our science but of our ignorance. We live in a small bright oasis of 

 knowledge surrounded on all sides by a vast unexplored region of im- 

 penetrable mystery. From age to age the strenuous labour of successive 

 generations wins a small strip from the desert and pushes forward the 

 boundary of knowledge. Of such triumphs we are justly proud. It is a 

 less attractive task — but yet it has its fascination as well as its uses — to 

 turn our eyes to the undiscovered country which still remains to be won, 

 to some of the stupendous problems of natural study which still defy our 

 investigation. Instead, therefore, of recounting to you what has been 

 done, or trying to forecast the discoveries of the future, I would rather 

 draw your attention to the condition in which we stand towards three or 



