SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY NOTES, 63 
funeral was observed as one of public mourning. Such an expression of general 
grief, was due perhaps even more to the worth of a singularly upright and genial 
Christian man, than to the admiration excited by his rare eloquence as a lecturer, 
and the fascination of a peculiarly winning and attractive manner, alike in pubiie 
and private. To those who knew him in the intimate relations of private life, his 
loss creates a blank that nothing can replace. To a wider circle it may suffice to 
say, the world has lost in him,—at the early age of forty-one,—a most faithful and 
conscientious servant of science, and a singularly honest and painstaking searcher 
after its truths. What he has done will give his name a place among the 
honoured ranks of our scientific discoverers,—but what he was capable of doing, 
had life been granted to him, would have rendered all he has done of little 
account. 
BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. 
The twenty-ninth Annual Meeting of the British Association for the advance- 
ment of Science, which opened its proceedings under the presidency of His Royal 
Highness Prince Albert at Aberdeen, on Wednesday, September 14th, 1859, 
appears to have fully equalled in general interest the most successful of its 
predecessors. The attendance was much beyond the average ; and so numerous 
were the papers communicated to the various Sections, that a mere enumeration 
of their titles, alone, would occupy many pages of our Journal. In the first 
Section, for example, comprising Mathematical and Physical Science, nearly eighty 
papers were read; and the total number of communications and Reports brought 
forward at the Meeting, is not far short of four hundred. Some of these papers 
are of the highest value: but a considerable number are of merely local interest, 
and many, indeed, appear to be entirely destitute of any special novelty or 
importance. Considering the undesirable manner in which really valuable 
communications, on account of the limited duration of the Meetings, are obliged 
to be hurried through, and their discussion greatly shortened, it would seem 
advisable to restrict the reading of the papers to such only as contain new facts or 
practical demonstrations, or which refer to questions of a debatable nature bearing 
on the philosophy of Science. Mere details of local geology (however useful in 
their way), with descriptions of ordinary fossils, analyses of river-waters, 
ordinary meteorological observations, and other papers of a similar character, 
that neither clear up doubtful points nor open out new paths of inquiry, might 
surely be forwarded with equal profit to some of the numerous scientific journals, 
in which, if worthy of regard, they would readily receive insertion. Some plan, 
at least, will have to be adopted sooner or later, to keep down the formidable array 
of papers, brought forward, in increasing numbers, at each successive meeting of 
the Association. 
We give below (from copies of the Aberdeen Herald, kindly placed at our 
disposal by Professor Wilson,) a Report of the President’s Address, and a few of 
the more important or generally-interesting papers communicated at this Meeting. 
