BRITISH ASSOCIATION.—THE PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 71 
tary efforts of the public. In these cases the Association, together with its 
sister Society, ‘‘ the Royal Society,” becomes the spokesman of Science with the 
Crown, the Government, or Parliament—sometimes, even, through the Home 
Government, with Foreign Governments. Thus it obtained the establishment, by 
the British Government, of magnetic and meteorological observatories in six dif- 
ferent parts of the globe, the beginning of a network of stations which we must 
hope will be so far extended as to compass, by their geographical distribution, 
the whole of the phenomena which throw light on this important point in our 
tellurian and even cosmical existence. The Institute of France, at the reecommene 
dation of M. Arago, whose loss the scientific world must long deplore, cheerfully 
co-operated with our Council on this occasion. It was our Association which, in 
conjunction with the Royal Society, suggested the Antarctic Expedition, with a 
view to further the discovery of the laws of terrestrial magnetism, and thus led 
to the discovery of the southern polar continent. It urged on the Admiralty the 
prosecution of the tidal observations, which that Department has since fully car- 
ried out. It recommended the establishment, in the British Museum, of the con- 
chological collection, exhibiting present and extinct species, which has now bes 
come an object of the greatest interest. 
I will not weary you by further examples, with which most of you are better 
acquainted than I am myself, but merely express my satisfaction that there should 
exist bodies of men who will bring the well-considered and understood wants of 
science before the public and the Government, who will even hand round the 
begging-box, and expose themselves to refusals and rebuffs to which all beggars 
are liable, with the certainty besides, of being considered great bores. Please to 
recollect that this species of bore is a most useful animal, well adapted for the 
ends for which nature intended him. He alone, by constantly returning to the 
charge, and repeating the same truths and the same requests, succeeds in awak- 
ening attention to the cause which he advocates, and obtains that hearing which 
is granted him at last for self-protection, as the minor evil compared to his im- 
portunity, but which is requisite to make his cause understood. This is more par- 
ticularly the case in a free, active, enterprising, and self-determining people like 
ours, where every interest works for itself, considers itself the all-important one, 
and makes its way in the world by its own efforts. Is it, then, to be wondered ~ 
at, that the interests of science, abstract as science appears, and not immediately 
showing a return in pounds, shillings, and pence, should be postponed, at least, 
to others which promise immediate tangible results? Is it to be wondered at, 
that even our public men require an effort to wean themselves from other sub- 
jects, in order to give their attention to science and men of science, when it is 
remembered that science, with the exception of mathematics, was, until of late, 
almost systematically excluded from our school and university education ;—that 
the traditions of early life are those which make and leave the strongest impres- 
sion on the human mind, and that the subjects with which we become acquainted, 
and to which our energies are devoted in youth, are those for which we retain the 
liveliest interest in after years, and that for these reasons the effort required must 
be both a mental and a moralone? A deep debt of gratitude is therefore due to 
bodies like this Association, which not only urges the wants of science on the 
