The British Association for the Advancement of Science. 



At its first meeting for the year 1906-7 of the Historical and Scientific 

 Society of Manitoba, the following paper was read by Rev. Dr. Bryce, the 

 President of the Society: — 



" Few buildings in Great Britain are better known to learned men than 

 Burlington House, Piccadilly, London. Here is a very extensive public build- 

 in the heart of busiest London, entirely devoted to Science and Art. 



Entering by a fine stone-supported gate, a visitor meets a spacious paved 

 court. Crowds of people may be seeen pressing into the Art Exhibition op- 

 posite the gate, but to a scholar much more interesting are the abodes of the 

 great societies. On the northeast side of the stone-laid square is the famous 

 Royal Society, dating from the time of Charles II., its great patron, and pos- 

 sessing a magnificent library of 45,000 volumes of Scientific literature. It has, 

 too, the picture of one of its great founders, the brilliant Robert Boyle, as 

 noted for practical talent and skill as a hundred years before, the great Lord 

 Bacon had been for his scientific philosophizing. This great Society has had 

 a wonderful career as a kind patron of Science, and after many wanderings 

 was nearly fifty years ago quartered in comfort in Burlington House. Here, too, 

 is the Royal Astronomical Society, which for a hundred years has by study and 

 publication advanced the Science of the Heavens. Of the same ripe age is 

 the Geological Society of London, followed as it was, a third of a century later 

 by the Chemical Society of London. Now three-quarters of a century old is 

 ihe Royal Geographical Society of London. 



These are a brilliant congeries of Associations receiving the royal bounty, 

 and worthily indeed have they repaid the patronage of monarchs and govern- 

 ments during the wonderful growth of British Science. 



One of the latest to arrive in this Pantheon of Science, though born seventy- 

 five years ago, was the British Association for the advancement of Science. This 

 Society has an airy resting place, some three or four storeys high, directly above 

 the gate of entrance of Burlington House. It is the most informal and demo- 

 cratic of the learned Societies, and from its fashion of perambulating to different 

 parts of Great Br.tain and the Empire has done far more for the advance of 

 Science than any of the others. It is the story of this Society that we propose to 

 tell to-night, the more so since we expect to have the British Association hold 

 its great annual meeting in our city of Winnipeg in 1 909. 



