XXxii REPORT — 1841. 



scientific work, this — far surpassing, in the scale of its means and in the com- 

 pleteness of its design, any ever yet attempted, and such as Bacon might 

 have assigned to the sages of his New Atlantis, if he had, in imagination, 

 extended their polity from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from Pole to Pole. 



We most gladly bear our testimony to the liberality and spirit with which 

 Her Majesty's Government have accepted and acted upon our suggestions ; 

 nor is this testimony at all weakened by our claiming for distinguished mem- 

 bers 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 observations 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 ; and that the liopes and expectations 

 which such an institution might naturally exercise, have been fully verified by 

 the course and progress, the labours and successes of the British Association. 



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

 racter of the Association, and will be inferior to none of the preceding in 

 the value and interest of its proceedings. We are not yet likely to want for 

 matter to labour upon. The collection of facts and the reduction of them by 

 various calculations is still required to a vast extent, in order that our know- 

 ledge 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 know- 

 ledge. 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 I In astronomy, indeed, this has been 

 done : sovereigns, and nations, and opulent individuals have thought their 

 wealth well bestowed in providing costly instruments, 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 changes, and even those of vegetable and animal life, — 

 all these afford materials 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 

 observatories 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 sug- 

 gested to us from time to time by our members. On the present occasion, a 

 distinguished Belgian philosopher, one of our corresponding members (M. 

 Quetelet), comes to us to invite us to take a part in determining, by extensive 

 observations, the changes which atmospheric conditions produce in periodical 

 phfenomena, — such as the times of the leafing and flowering of plants, of the 

 arrival of birds, and the like. He has obtained extensive co-operation in his 

 own country, and no doubt will find fellow-labourers in ours. Meteorology, 

 in its largest sense, is a subject which, although great collections of observa- 



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