ADDRESS. cix 
“for equality, fineness, and subtilty” of operation. No expense, time, or 
pains have been spared by this Association to bring the exquisitely con- 
structed and ingeniously adjusted mechanisms required to give us cognizance 
of the operations of the mysterious influences pervading our earth and atmo- 
sphere to their utmost attainable exactitude of performance. 
To prepare, to adjust, to test, verify, and rectify those instruments for the 
use of voyagers and travellers are labours that have grown out of the im- 
portant function of the ‘ Kew Observatory.’ 
These labours have been cheerfully performed whenever and by whom- 
soever required; as, recently, at the request of the Admiralty and Royal 
Society in aid of the Commission for determining the Oregon Boundary, and 
in the Second Expedition of Livingstone to the Zambesi. Not only have 
philosophical instruments been prepared and constants determined, but the 
voyagers have received, at Kew, practical instructions in their use. 
The reputation of the accuracy of the instruments at our establishment is 
now such that requests are received from different Foreign States for a like 
application of the resources which it commands. The United States, Russia, 
Austria, Portugal, the Papal States for the‘ Collegio Romano,’—all have 
testified, by such applications for the preparation and adjustment of philo- 
sophical instruments, that the establishment, originated and organized by the 
British Association, fulfils a national scientific want. Our ‘Report’ this 
year will show that the Admiralty, the Board of Trade, and other Home- 
institutions give the same testimony. 
With the growth of its reputation and experience of its utility, the labours 
carried on at Kew have necessarily multiplied ; and the expense of the esta- 
blishment cannot be this year less than £800. 
Were the duties of the Kew Observatory superadded to those performed 
at Greenwich, such expense would fall, in the ordinary course, upon the State. 
Hitherto it has been borne by the British Association, and to that extent 
cripples our power of lending the helping hand to other scientific work. 
We have to thank the Government for the use of the building at Kew. 
Such pecuniary aid as has been added to the sums allotted from our sub- 
scriptions has been received from a kindred self-supporting Scientific Asso- 
ciation. The Royal Society liberally voted the amount required for the 
purchase of the “Whitworth’s Lathe and Planing Machine,” now doing 
efficient work at the Observatory. 
In the late location, by liberal permission of the Government, of the Royal, 
Linnean, and Chemical Societies in contiguous apartments at Burlington 
House, we hail the commencement of that organization, recommended by 
the British Association at their first meeting, from which the most important 
results of combination of present scattered powers, and of a system of intellec- 
tual cooperation, may be confidently expected. “The combined advantages, 
including at once the most powerful stimulus and the most efficient guidance 
of scientific research,” have appeared to an eminent member of our Body 
“to be beyond calculation.” 
