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0f Sci^ita. 



NOTTINGHAM: 1937 



THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 



THE HISTORY OF EVOLUTIONARY 



THOUGHT 



AS RECORDED IN MEETINGS OF THE 

 BRITISH ASSOCIATION 



BY 



Prof. Sir EDWARD B. POULTON, D.Sc, LL.D., F.R.S. 

 Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford 



PRESIDENT OF THE ASSOCIATION. 



Sir William Thomson, in his Address at Edinburgh in 1871, said 

 that ' the real origin of the British Association ' was given in the 

 words of a letter written by David Brewster to John Phillips on 

 February 23, 1831, a few months before the first meeting : ' The 

 principal object of the Society would be to make the cultivators of 

 science acquainted with each other, to stimulate one another to new 

 exertions, and to bring the objects of science more before the public 

 eye, and to take measures for advancing its interests and accelerating 

 its progress.' That the time was fully ripe for the birth of the 

 Association is made very clear by the words written by John Keble 

 to a friend, referring to the D.C.L. degrees conferred, at the Oxford 

 meeting in 1832, on David Brewster, Robert Brown, John Dalton 

 and Michael Faraday : ' The Oxford Doctors have truckled sadly 

 to the spirit of the times in receiving the hodge-podge of philosophers 

 as they did ' — an opinion on which Lord Salisbury commented at 

 the Oxford meeting in 1894 : ' It is amusing at this distance of time, 

 to note the names of the hodge-podge of philosophers whose 

 academical distinctions so sorely vexed Mr. Keble 's gentle spirit.' 

 It is not only amusing but pathetic that such words should have 

 been used by a revered member of a University which had done 



