268 Sir John Lubbock’s Address. 
ArT. XXXIX.— Address of Sir John Lubbock, President of the 
British Association at York. 
THE connection of the British Association with the 
City of York does not depend merely on the fact that our first 
meeting was held here. It originated in a letter addressed by 
Sir David Brewster to Professor Phillips, as Secretary to your 
York Philosophical Society, by whom the idea was warmly take 
described by Mr. Spottiswoode, at Dublin, and are so well 
nown to you, that I will not dwell on them this evening. 
The excellent President of the Royal Society, in the same 
address, suggested that the past history of the Association 
ould an appropriate theme for the present meeting. 
The history of the Association, however, is really the history 
of science, and I long shrunk from the attempt to give even a 
panoramic survey of a subject so vast and so difficult; nor 
should I have ventured to make any such attempt, but that I 
knew I could rely on the assistance of friends in every depart- 
ment of science. 
been made known at our meetings. I have, moreover, espe 
cially taken those discoveries which the Royal Society has 
deemed worthy of a medal. It is of course impossible within 
the limits of a single address to do more than allude to a few 
of these, and that very briefly. In dealing with so large a 
subject I first hoped that I might take our annual volumes as 
a text-book. This, however, I at once found to be quite ae 
. 
possible. For instance, the first volume commences wit 
