British Association for the Advancement of Science. 395 



suggestions ; nor is this testimony at all weakened by our claiming for 

 distinguished members of our own, the merit of having brought into view 

 the importance of such an undertaking, laid before the English public 

 the progress which the subject was making in other countries, planned 

 the scheme of operations which our own exertions ought to follow, and 

 animated the observers, by giving them the certainty that their observa- 

 tions will be well used and fully appreciated. 



" When we can point to these numerous and valuable direct results of 

 our exertions, we cannot at all waver in our conviction that those persons 

 acted in the truest spirit of the age, and of the nation, who, eleven years 

 ago, framed the design of a voluntary association for the advancement of 

 science among the subjects of this empire : an<J that the hopes and ex- 

 pectations which such an institution might naturally exercise, have been 

 fully verified by the course and progress, the labors and successes of the 

 British Association. 



" I do not doubt that the present Meeting will continue to uphold the 

 character of the Association, and will be inferior to none of the preced- 

 ing in the value and interest of its proceedings. We are not yet likely 

 to want for matter to labor upon. The collection of facts and the reduc- 

 tion of them by various calculations is still required to a vast extent, in 

 oi-der that our knowledge may make the next step of progress to which 

 its path invites our hopes. 



" It is easy to point out vast fields of research, on which our resources 

 and our energies may be applied with every prospect of a rapid increase 

 of knowledge. For, in fact, how little has been done for science, by 

 the collection of exact and long-continued series of observations, such 

 as he must have before him who is to interpret nature. In astronomy, 

 indeed, this has been done : sovereigns, and nations, and opulent individ- 

 uals have thought their wealth well bestowed in providing costly instru- 

 ments, and rewarding the astronomer through his daily and nightly toils. 

 The stars have been well observed from the beginning of civilization ; 

 but, for the purposes of science, we ought to have observations as careful 

 and as continued of all the other parts of nature as we have of the stars. 

 The tides, the waves, the winds, and all the other changes of the air, 

 pressure, temperature, moisture, magnetism, electricity, chemical chan- 

 ges, and even those of vegetable and animal life, — all these aflford mate- 

 rials for researches full of importance and interest. For these, the time 

 is, perhaps, not yet come, when they can be urged upon governments as 

 a part of their business, in the same way in which astronomy is ; except 

 perhaps magnetism, which has already taken its place in our observato- 

 ries by the side of astronomy, in our own and other countries. Those 

 other subjects, then, are fitly cultivated by a voluntary association such 

 as ours ; and the occasions of fitly doing this will doubtless be suggested 



