85i.] 



BllITISH ASSOCIATION FOK THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. 



89 



had hoped to be able to communicate in person, as a paper, to the 

 present Meeting. With regard to the statistics of agriculture, the 

 main object is to procure such knowledge of the fncts us shall guide 

 the operations of the consumer and tlie merchant. I ivould suggest 

 that they should be taken and published at two periods of the year, 

 once in the spring, recording the extent of soil devoted to each kind 

 of grain, — a fact easily ascertained ; the second time as soon as the 

 harvest is concluded, — announcing the amount of the crop, as ascer- 

 tained onscveralspccimenlieldsunderdifferentcircumstances of soil and 

 climate, and applying it in due proportion as a multiple to the acreage 

 already published. A really accurate census of the harvest is, I be- 

 lieve, impracticable, at least within the period which would alone 

 make it valuable for present use ; and the approximation which I have 

 suggested would, I conceive,- be adequate to the purpose. 



In regard to Geography and Ethnography, there are few sections, 

 I believe, which have more general interest, and none, I imagine, 

 ■which would be more attractive here, — where every new discovery is 

 connected with the material interests of the pilace, a new source of 

 raw material, or a new destination for finished work ; and where 

 every new communication, established and reported, is anotlicr channel 

 for the extension of tliat commerce, which, bursting from the channels 

 of the Mersey, permeates and percolates every creek and cranny of 

 the known world. 



The great navigations which are opening up the Iieart of the South 

 American continent, by the Paraguay, the Amazons, and the Orinoco ; 

 that are traversing and uniting the colonies of Victoria and South 

 Australia by the river JIurray ; the projected exploration of North 

 Australia, whicli, I am sorrj' to say, is as yet only a project, and may 

 require some of the fostering warmth of the Association to bring it 

 into actual existence : the wonderful discoveries in South Africa, by 

 LiWngston and Anderson — (I am happy to say that Mr. Anderson is 

 here to tell his own story), — and the explorations of central Africa, 

 by Earth and Vogel ; the pictures given us by Capt Erskine and 

 others of the condition of the islanders of the South Pacific, passing in 

 every stage of transition from the lowest barbarism to a fitness for tlie 

 highest European and Christian culture ; these, and a hundred other 

 topics, awaken an ever new interest in the mind of the philosopher 

 and statesman, in the feelings of the Christian and the lover of his 

 kind. What new fields for science ! What new opportunities for 

 •wealth and power ! What new openings for good ! How important 

 that those who issue from this great emporium of modern commerce — 

 this more than Tyre of modern times — should know how to turn them 

 to advantage ! Surely your periodical ^nsits here, with their kindling, 

 stimulating — I was going to say infections — influences are no mean 

 instrument for such a purpose. 



It cannot be for nothing that the heroes of every branch of science 

 are assembled from many countries within these walls, and are brought 

 into personal contact with the most enterprising and public-spirited 

 of our merchants ; that, in the language of my distinguished prede- 

 cessor in this chair, slightly adapted, " the counting-house is thus 

 brought into juxtaposition with the laboratory and the study." Com- 

 merce will more than ever be auxiliary to science — and science more 

 than ever the helpmate of commerce — and a still further impulse wiH 

 be given to those beneficial influences, which, in spite of some painful, 

 though necessary interruption, occasioned by our present state of war, 

 a good Providence is so visibly extending over the whole habitable 

 globe. 



It is happily becoming every year less and less necessary to press 

 these things on public notice. In an age of gas and steam — of steam- 

 engines and steamboats — of railroads, and telegraphs, and photo- 

 gi'aphs — the importance of science is no longer questioned. It is a 

 truism — a commonplace. We are far from the foundation days of the 

 Royal Society, — wlien, in spite of the example of the monarch, their 

 proceedings were the ridicule of the Court; and even the immortal 

 Butler thought the labours of a WuUis, a Sydenham, a Harvey, a 

 Ilooke, or a Newton, fit subjects for liis wit. 



It is still, however, worth inquiring wliether sufficient facilities for 

 education in science exist or are in progi-ess in our country ; and 

 whether Ctovernment and other important bodies provide suQicicnt 

 encouragement and reward for its prosecution. 



Now, in regard to the former, there can be no doubt that, imtil a 

 very late period, the assistances to scientific education furnished in 

 this country, either by educational institutions or tlie State, were very 

 slight, and totally unworthy of the object or the nation. Look at the 

 lower schools: until very latelj' nothing but reading and writing, and 



hardly that, was ever oiiered to the labouring classes. Look at the 

 grammar schools : they were limited to the acquisition of a small 

 modicum of Greek and Latin, often not even of arithmetic. The 

 middle classes of society, those who did not send their children to the 

 Universities, had no opportunity of acquiring any, the slightest, 

 knowledge of science, whether practical or abstract, from the untested, 

 ill-respected teachers in private commercial schools, or from the 

 casual visit of an itinerant lecturer with his travelling apparatus. 

 But what did the Universities ? My own University, Oxford, to which 

 I acknowledge in other respects the highest obligations, did little for 

 physical science. True, that the study of Mathematics, as an exer- 

 cise and training of the understanding, received its honours there, 

 though the genius of the place has never yet been favourable to the 

 pursuit. True, that until comparatively a recent period, the honours 

 of the sister University were exclusively, or nearly so, confined to the 

 same science ; and that the school of Newton has seldom been without 

 names not unworthy of such a founder. But even there the Jlathe- 

 matics were still too exclusively regarded as a mere training of the 

 understanding, and not as an instrument for the discovery of further 

 truth ; and the fair tree of science, planted within the academic courts, 

 though healthy and vigorous, was somewhat barren of fresh fruit. 

 Such as it had been in the time of Newton, such, in a great degree, 

 for a century and a half, at least, it remained. But to other than 

 mathematical science, I believe I may, say at either University en- 

 couragement there was little or none. If now and then a professor 

 was to be found whose title promised something of the kind, on ap- 

 proaching him you would find that his existence was little more than 

 nominal ; that his courses were not frequented, even if they were 

 oS'ered, — or if at all only by those who were considered rather 

 as the idle men; because success in them was not only no ad- 

 vantage in the University career, but, by the time which they 

 abstracted from the rewarded studies, was a positive loss and 

 obstruction in the way of the honours and emoluments of the 

 place. So that it might fairly be said, that if any advance was 

 made in such sciences, at least in the Universities of England, it was 

 rather in spite of than by reason of the system pursued in those other- 

 wise useful, noble and magnificent institutions. In Scotland, indeed, 

 the extended study of medicine, connected as it is with so many other 

 branches of science, together with the less amount of artificial forcing 

 into other studies, led naturally to the pursuit of physical science, and 

 a Black and a Gregory, a Leslie, and a Playfaii- had no rival contem- 

 porary names at Oxford and Cambridge. The names of a Whewell 

 and a Herschel, an Airy, a Challis, and a Sedgwick, of a Powell and a 

 Daubeny, and a Buckland, — alas that he is only a name now — would 

 forbid the assertion in regard to more recent times. But what, mean- 

 while, was the State doing ? That State which, with its limited popu- 

 lation and territory, depends not upon the number of its people, but 

 upon the individual value of each man, — not upon the number of its 

 acres, but upon their skilful cultivation, — not even upon the resources 

 of its surface, however well developed, but upon the mines which lurk 

 beneath it, — not even upon its mines but upon all the various .and 

 varying manufactures, which these mines give extraordinary facilities 

 for carrying on ; not even on these manufiictures, but on the extended 

 commerce and navigation, which are necessary to provide the materials 

 to draw them forth from the remotest corners of the earth, and to send 

 them back with speed, safety and economy, in another form and com- 

 bination, often to the very spots from which they were derived ;— in a 

 word dependent for the full development of its agi-iculture, its mining 

 industry, its manufactures and its commerce, upon the widest exten- 

 sion and the fullest cultivation of Chemistry, of Natural History, of 

 Mineralogy, of Geology, of Astronomy, of Meteorology and Mechanics. 

 What did the State do for these things? Why, absolutely nothing. 

 There was for a time a Board of Longitude, which instead of enlarging 

 and improving, it abolished; a Board of Agi'iculture, which it dropped ; 

 a School of Naval Architecture, which, at the bidding of a narrow 

 economy, and at the instance of practical men, it abolished when the 

 fruits were ripening ; a School of Naval Instruction, at Portsmouth, 

 which it dropped. Here and there still survives a grant from the 

 bounty of an individ\ial monarch, grudgingly adopted by the State, — 

 of £10 for a Professor of Natural Pjiilosophy at Aberdeen, or 60 

 guineas for a similar Professor at St. Andrews, or £150 to one at 

 Glasgow, or £30 to one at Edinburgh, and more recently, grants of 

 £100 a year each to fom- or five Professors in each of the old Univer- 

 sities of England. This is, as far as I can discover, all that the mag- 

 niflcent State of Britian did, until recently, for that Science on which 

 her wealth, — and if her wealth, her power, — and if her power her very 

 existence, — is dependent. True, one advantage wo have enjoyed. 



