X THIRD KEPORT — 1833. 



same time it had fully redeemed its pledge of not interfering with 

 the province of other Scientific Societies. 



The President (the Rev. Professor Sedgwick,) stated, in his 

 opening speech, that it was the desire of the Vice-Chancellor 

 and the Heads of Colleges that everything should be done on 

 the present occasion to emulate, as far as circumstances per- 

 mitted, the splendid reception which had been given to the 

 Association by the sister University of Oxford. He dwelt on 

 the advantages which such a Meeting brought with it to the 

 places in which it was held, by inducing scientific foreigners to 

 visit them, and expressed the delight with which he hailed such 

 visits, as an omen that the great barriers which for a length 

 of time had served man for man, had now been broken 

 down. He described the character of the Reports which 

 the Association has published ; and added that he attached so 

 much value to these expositions of the state of science, that 

 he had requested one of the Secretaries, (the Rev, William 

 Whewell,) to present to the Meeting a fuller analysis of their 

 contents. The President concluded his speech with the fol- 

 lowing gratifying announcement : " There is a philosopher," he 

 said, " sitting among us whose hair is blanched by time, but 

 possessing an intellect still in its healthiest vigour, — a man whose 

 whole life has been devoted to the cause of truth, — my vener- 

 able friend Dr. Dalton. Without any powerful apparatus for 

 making philosophical' experiments, with an apparatus, indeed, 

 which many might think almost contemptible, and with very 

 limited external means for employing his great natural powers, 

 he has gone straight forward in his distinguished course, and 

 obtained for himself in those branches of knowledge which he 

 has cultivated, a name not perhaps equalled by that of any- 

 other living philosopher in the world. From the hour he came 

 from his mother's womb the God of nature laid his hand upon 

 him, and ordained him for the ministration of high philosophy. 

 But his natural talents, great as they are, and his almost 

 intuitive skill in tracing the relations of material phsenomena, 

 would have been of comparatively little value to himself and to 

 society, had there not been superadded to them a beautiful 

 moral simpUcity and singleness of heart, which made him go 

 on steadily in the way he saw before him, without turning to 

 the right hand or to the left, and taught him to do homage to 

 no authority before that of truth. Fixing his eye on the most 

 extensive views of science, he has been not only a successful 

 experimenter, but a philosopher of the highest order; his 

 experiments have never had an insulated character, but have 

 been always made as contributions towards some important 



