232 American Association. 



assemblies and its hospitality those eminent strangers who come 

 from foreign lands, rises almost above the sphere of private friend- 

 ship, and partakes of the dignity of a compact between all the 

 nations of the earth. But it is not merely in its magnitude and 

 universality, and consequently higher power of stimulating intel- 

 lect through sympathy, that this Association dilFers from others. 

 It differs also from them in its constitution and details; in the 

 mie'ratory character of its meetings, which visit, for a week each 

 year, place after place in succession, so as to indulge and stimu- 

 late all, without wearying or burdening any ; in encouraging oral 

 discussion, throughout its several sections, as the principal me- 

 dium of making known among members the opinions, views and 

 discoveries of each other, in calling upon eminent men to prepare 

 reports upon the existing state of knowledge in the principal de- 

 partments of science ; and in pu!)lishing only abstracts or notices 

 of all those other contributions which it has not, as a body, called 

 for ; ia short, in attempting to induce men of science to work 

 more together than they do elsewhere, to establish a system of 

 more strict co-operation between the labourers in one common 

 field, and thus to eflfect, more fully than other societies can do, 

 the combination of intellectual exertions. The discussions in its 

 sections are more animated, comprehensive and instructive, and 

 make minds which were strangers more intimately acquainted 

 with each other than can be supposed to be the case in any less 

 general body ; the general meetings bring together the cultivators 

 of all different departments of science ; and even the less formal 

 conversations which take place in its halls of assembly during 

 every pause of business, are themselves the working together of 

 mind with mind, and not only excite but are co-operation. 



It is this personal intercourse with the great scientific and 

 learned men of the age, which in itself constitutes the principal 

 charm of such meetings. How, for instance, would we have de- 

 lighted to listen to a Newton, had he condescended to converse 

 on the great truths of Astronomy ; to a Jussieu, imparting to a 

 circle of inmates in his own garden at Trianon, those glimpses 

 with respect to the natural relations of plants, which he found it 

 so diflacult to reduce to writing ; or to a Linnaeus, discussing at 

 Oxford his then novel views with respect to the vegetable king, 

 dom, and winning from the reluctant Dillenius a tardy acknow- 

 ledgment of their merits ? These great men have passed away ; 

 but we have others, in their own sphere and d^ree, who, when 



