1852.] 



ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 



81 



are representatives of all ranks and all professions — monarclis and 

 artizaus, priests and soldiers. There is one king in Europe who 

 is a good practical botanist, and who must look back upon the 

 hours spent in the arrangement of his iine herbarium with far 

 more pleasure, than upon those wasted in a vain aud retrogade 

 course of pohtics. The monai-ch in question is His Majesty of 

 Saxony, who, in his scientific career at least, has gained honour 

 and respect Many is the Story told by his subjects of their 

 ruler's adventures when following his favourite and harmless 

 hobby ; — how, more than once, astray fi'om his yawning cour- 

 tiera, he had wandered in search of some vegetable rariiy, aci-oss 

 the frontier of his legitimata dominions, and on attempting to 

 return was locked up by his own guards, as a spy or a smuggler, 

 siuce he could produce no passport, nor give any more probable 

 account of himself than the preposterous assertion that he was 

 their king ! Fifteen years ago he made a famous excursion to 

 the stony and piratical httle republic of Monte Negro. It was 

 literally a voyage of botanical discover^', and tha potentate sailed 

 down the Adriatic in a steimer, fitted out with all the appliances 

 of scientific investigation. On its deck he might be seen busily 

 engaged in laying out his plants, ably and zealously assisted by 

 his equerries and aids-de-camps, and guided by the ad\'iee of 

 eminent botanists, who accompanied him as members of his suite. 

 Such a kingly progress had surely never been seen before, unless 

 Alexander the Great may have relieved the monotony of con- 

 quering by making occasional natural history excursions with his 

 quondam tutoi-, Aristotle. The Monte-Negriotes, on ordinary 

 occasions very troublesome and by no means trustjTvorthy peo- 

 ple — folks who still keep many of the woi-st habits of the old 

 Scottish Highlanders — were mystified into tranquility by the 

 peculiar proceedings of their royal visitor and his noble attend- 

 ants. Resolved, however, to render due honour to so distinguish- 

 ed and unusual a guest, they furnished a guard of state to 

 accompany him in all his peregrinations, and wherever his bot- 

 anical Majesty stooped to gather a new or rare species, the soldiei-s 

 halted, and with much ceremony presented arms ! 



Were some mighty member of England's over-proud peerage 

 to be told this true tale of kingly amusement, it would probably 

 be received with a smile of mingled pity and scorn, and an 

 expression of compassion for such " sad trifling." Give credit 

 where credit is due, whether to king or caitift'. Which is the 

 real tiifler ? — the man who, fortunate in having leisure houre and 

 months of vacation, degrades the healthful exercise he seeks by 

 tainting it with the barbarous pleasure of torturing the beasts of 

 the chase and the birds of the moor, multiplied and cherished 

 thi'ough a demoralizing system of " preservation," protected by 

 vicious laws : — or he who gains exercise as healthful when seek- 

 ing to extend his knowledge of the wondrous variety of creation, 

 and to delight his ej'e and improve his mind by searching out 

 in their native wilds the hving evidences of the exquisite beauty 

 and cm'ious workings of Nature? 



We may suppose the hypothetical opposite of an absolute king 

 to be embodied ia. a journeyman tailor. In a diagram ponstruct- 

 ed hke that made by Mr. Owen Jones, for the department of 

 Practical Art, these personages would hold much the same rela- 

 tive places as the "primary red" and " secondary green " — if, in- 

 deed, our tailor might not be better paralleled by " tertiary rus- 

 set." However ditferent in their respective compositions, the 

 pleasant tint of happiness may be given to the lives of both kings 

 and tailore by the same pure ingredient. If royalty grows earn- 

 est sfid simjjle in the pui'suit of herbary, so also can similar tastes 

 make a poor tailor as happy as a king. In a town far north, 

 many years ago, we were present at the annivereary of a Mecha- 

 nics' Institution, and had to say a few words about flowers and 

 trees. It was well on towards midnight ere the proceedings 

 closed, when a dapper wiry Httle man rushed out from among 



the crowd, and invited us, as one naturalist invites another, to visit 

 liis humble home, and share his frugal supper. Gladly was the 

 invitation accepted : for the earnest and intellectual look of our 

 evidently poor host excited no small interest and some cmiosity. 

 He led his guests through long, dreary, tortuous, and imsavoury 

 alleys, and tiien up an interminable stair, faintly illumined by the 

 moonlight that seemed to ooze through loopholes. In the story 

 nearest the sky was the home of this student of nature — a jour- 

 neyman tailor, with a wife and innumerable children, the eldest 

 of whom was a fine intelligent lad, verging upon manhood, assist- 

 ing the work, and sharing in the tastes of his father. Their 

 fa\ ourite studies were manifested by the conversion of an old 

 cupboaj'd into the case of a well-arranged herbarium, by a glazed 

 cabinet filled with stuti'ed birds and rows of impaled insects, and 

 by a shelf of well-selected scientific books, the purchase of which 

 must have absorbed the profits of many a close day's work. The 

 matron of the fainity, a smihng, courteous dame, seemed to par- 

 ticipate in the evident delight of her husband and first-born, and 

 to take pride in a heartfelt approval of their studies. On the round 

 deal table a clean white cloth was spread, with simple food to 

 grace it ; and two pleasant hours were spent in lively discourse, 

 larded with hard scientific names, well undei-stood, though strange- 

 ly pronounced. The happiness of the whole family was, we 

 believe, \'isibly increased when, a few weeks afterwards, it became 

 our duty to announce to the head of it, that he had been elected 

 honorary member of a distinguished scientific society. 



Who that has read the story of " Mary Barton," does not 

 recollect the admirable picture of the quaint old artisan-natura- 

 list. Job Leigh ? There are literally hundreds of such men scat- 

 tered over the land — and they are a blessing to it. At almost 

 eve'ry meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, some worthies of this class may be seen enjoying the 

 happiest day of their fives, by hstening to dry and seemingly 

 obstruse discoui-ses in the Natural History section. Most wel- 

 come are they when they appear ; and there is no more thoroughly 

 hearty welcome, unspoiled by offensive savour of social inequality 

 than that given by philosophers of fame to their brethren of 

 humble worldly position. 



" The nature of flowers Dame Physic doth shew: 

 She teachetli them all to make known to a few." 



Such was the homely view cf botany taken by most of our 

 ancestors, and set into rugged rhymes by quaint old Tusser. The 

 chivalrous Lord Herbert of Cherbury entertained more exalted 

 notions of the fair science, for, writes he in his delightful "Life," 

 " it is a fine study, and worthy of gentleman," who according to 

 his lordship, ought " to know the nature of all plants, being our 

 fellow-creatures, and made for man." We maintain the same 

 position, and humbly submit that even the few instances of the 

 fineness of the study, and its woi-thiness for gentlemen — our king 

 and our tailor both deserve that often-abused though most hon- 

 orable of titles — which our space has permitted us to cite, are 

 unassailable evidences of its truth. 



Twenty Second JUeeting 



Of the British Association for the advancement of Science 



(Extracts from the Presidents Address.) 

 Hitherto the researches of Sidereal Astronomy, even in their 

 widest extension, had manifested the existence of those forces only 

 with wliich we are familial- in our solar system. The refinements 

 of modern observation and the perfection of theoretical represen- 

 tation had assured us that the orbits in which the double stars, 

 immeasurably distant from us, revolve around eaih other, are 

 governed by the same laws of molecular attraction which deter- 

 mine the orbits of the planetary bodies of our own system. But 



