EEITISH ASSOCIATION. 63 



BRITISH ASSOCIATION" FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. 



The admirable and comprehensive Presidential Address delivered by Professor 

 Owen, at the opening meeting of the British Association in August last, has been 

 delayed appearing in our pages, — along with an abstract which we had prepared 

 of the papers read in the sections, — by the space claimed for original communica- 

 tions. But the Address contains such a valuable resume of work accomplished in 

 the various departments of science in recent years, as our readers will still be 

 glad to have placed on record here ; and we, accordingly, find room for it, with 

 some unimportant omissions in our Scientific Appendix : — 



THE president's ADDRESS. 



We are here met, in this our twenty-eighth annual assembly, to continue the aim 

 of the Association, which is the promotion of Science, or the knowledge of the laws 

 of Nature ; whereby we acquire a dominion over nature, and are thereby able so 

 to apply her powers as to advance the well-being of society and exalt the condi- 

 tion of mankind. It is no light matter, therefore, the work that we are here 

 assembled to do. God has given to man a capacity to discover and comprehend 

 the laws by which His universe is governed ; and man is impelled by a healthv 

 and natural impulse to exercise the faculties by which that knowledge can be 

 acquired. Agreeably with the relations which have been instituted between our 

 finite faculties and phenomena that affect them, we arrive at demonstrations and 

 convictions which are the most certain that our present state of being can have 

 or act upon. Nor let any one, against whose prepossessions a scientific truth may 

 jar, confound such demonstrations with the speculative philosophies condemned by 

 the Apostle ■, or ascribe to arrogant intellect, soaring to regions of forbidden mys- 

 teries, the acquisition of such truths as have been or may be established by patient 

 and inductive research. For the most part, the discoverer has been so placed by 

 circumstances, — rather than by predetermined selection, — as to have his work of 

 investigation allotted to him as his daily duty ; in the fulfilment of which he is 

 brought face to face with phenomena into which he must inquire, and the result 

 of which inquiry he must faithfully impart. The advance of natural as of moral 

 truth has been and is progressive : but it has pleased the Author of all truth to 

 vary the fashion of the imparting of such parcels thereof as He has allotted, from 

 time to time, for the behoof and guidance of mankind. Those who are privileged 

 with the faculties of discovery are, therefore, to be regarded as pre-ordained ins- 

 truments in making known the power of God, without a knowledge of which, as 

 well as of Scripture, we are told that we shall err. Great and marvellous have 

 been the manifestations of this power imparted to us of late times, not only in 

 respect of the shape, motions and solar relations of the earth, but also of its age 

 and inliabitants. In regard to the period during which the globe allotted to man 

 has revolved in its orbit, present evidence strains the mind to grasp such sum of 

 past time with an effort like that by which it tries to realize the space dividing that 

 orbit from the fixed stars and remoter nebulce. Yet, during all those eras that 

 have passed since the Cambrian rocks were deposited which bear the impressed 

 record of creative power, as it was then manifested, we know, through the inter • 



