70 SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY NOTES. 
they are such as require the greatest possible number of facts to be obtained. 
Here science often stands in need of the assistance of the general public, and grate- 
fally aecepts any contribution offered, provided the facts be accurately observed. 
In either case the Association points out what is to observed, and how it is to be 
observed. The first is the result of the same careful sifting process which the 
Association employs in directing the issue of special reports. The investigations 
are entrusted to specially-appointed committees or selected individuals. They 
are in most cases not unattended with considerable expense, and the Association, 
not content with merely suggesting and directing, furnishes by special grants the 
pecuniary means for defraying the outlay caused by the nature and the extent of 
the inquiry. If we consider that the income of the Association is solely derived 
from the contributions of its members, the fact that no less a sum than £17,000 
has, since its commencement, been thus granted for scientific purposes, is certainly 
most gratifying. The question how to observe, resolves itself into two,—that of 
the scientific method which is to be employed in approaching a problem or making 
an observation, and that of the philosophical instruments used in the observation 
or experiment. The Association brings to bear the combined knowledge and ex- 
perience of the scientific men not only of this but other countries, on the discovery 
of that method which, while it economises time and labour, promises the most 
aceurate results. The method to which, after careful examination, the palm has 
been awarded, is then placed at the free disposal and use of all scientific investi- 
gators. The Association also issues, where practicable, printed forms, merely 
requiring the different heads to be filled up, which, by their uniformity, become an 
important means for assisting the subsequent reduction of the observations for 
the abstraction of the laws which they may indicate. At the same time most 
searching tests and inquiries are constantly carried on in the Observatory at Kew, 
given to the Association by Her Majesty, the object of which is practically to 
test the relative value of different methods and instruments, and to guide the 
eonstantly progressive improvements in the construction of the latter. The es- 
tablishment at Kew has undertaken the further important service of verifying and 
correcting to a fixed standard the instruments of any maker, to enable observa- 
_ tions made with them to be reduced to the same numerical expression. I need 
hardly remind the inhabitants of Aberdeen that the Association, in one of the 
first years of its existence, undertook the comparative measurement of the Aber- © 
deen standard scale with that of Greenwich—a research ably carried out by the 
late Mr. Baily. - 
The impediments to the general progress of science, the removal of which I 
have indicated as one of the tasks which the Association has set for itself, are of 
various kinds. If they were only such as direction, advice, and encouragement 
would enable the individual, or even combined efforts of philosophers, to over- 
come, the exertions of the Association which I have just alluded to might be suf- 
ficient for the purpose. But they are often such as can only be successfully dealt 
with by the powerful arm of the State, or the long purse of the nation. These 
impediments may be caused either by the social condition of the country itself, 
by restrictions arising out of peculiar laws, by the political separation of different 
countries, or by the magnitude of the undertakings being out of all proportion to 
the means and power of single individuals of the Asscciation, ur even the volun- 
