Nov. 2, 1 888.] 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



469 



work up all those subjects which the individual cannot manage. 

 One of our first duties will be to work up all the facts known in 

 every branch of Australasian science, if you will allow me 

 to use the term. I mean all those branches of science which 

 are more immediately connected with the material advance- 

 ment of the colonies. This I hope will not take long, and 

 then we shall be in a position to advance in these subjects. Every 

 worker knows how necessary it is to have all facts in clear and 

 orderly arrangement, as a preliminary and necessary step to any safe 

 -advance. It may seem to some that I am asking too much — that 

 we are all hard-worked men, and but few in numbers, and have no 

 time for such work ; but exactly the same may be and has been 

 said of the men who are the workers in the British Association, yet 

 they are not the men of leisure, but the busy men of science, who 

 do the work, and it is very instructive to watch how they respond to 

 the call of the association ; it comes like a call to arms that must be 

 responded to, and is responded to often at great personal sacrifice, 

 and with no other motive than loyalty to the cause they serve. But 

 the parent association has just the same power over hard-worked 

 professional and business men ; in thousands of cases it has taken 

 from such a man a week of ill-spared time during which he attended 

 the meetings, and by so doing has succeeded in setting him to work 

 for a year, thinking how he can advance the cause of science. As 

 like produces like, so these meetings of workers make many new 

 workers ; and as we read down the list of names of those who have 

 been drawn into the great army of workers we find the name of 

 every distinguished man in the United Kingdom — men with a prac- 

 tice or business in which they had no spare moments ; Stephenson, 

 Scott Russell, Brunei, Bessemer, Nasmyth, Armstrong, Warren 

 *le la Rue, Spottiswoode, Whiteworth, Siemens, and so on, through 

 all that grand muster roll of which any nation would be proud. 

 Now, I do not for one moment suppose that we with four millions 

 can make the same display of talented workers that the United 

 Kingdom can from thirty-seven millions ; but we can find some, and 

 I am quite sure that our association will be the means of bringing 

 to the front many men amongst us, now scattered through the 

 country, who have ability and genius, and who are willing to take 

 up some of the subjects which require investigation and work them 

 ■out ; men whose daily work is of another kind, but who have never- 

 theless a keen love for science and investigation and the spare 

 time to take up a limited subject and fill up the whole de- 

 tail. I am convinced that there are many such who require no 

 other stimulus than that of being invited to render services of the 

 highest order. They want to work, but do not know where to 

 begin ; while, on the other hand, a crowd of suggestions meets the 

 busy scientific worker at every turn. Ideas that want realising are 

 continually floating in his thoughts. Now it is some promising line 

 of investigation, some experiments that only want making to put the 

 finishing-touch to a long line of reasoning, and establish some new 

 scientific fact or some new law of nature. Now it is a new view of 

 an old and well-fought difficulty, some new vantage-ground that 

 promises success ; but he cannot leave the pressing duties of the 

 present hour to work out the promising future. And for him to 

 meet those who have time and ability to work is like hope in the 

 wilderness, and if our association can brine; them together it will 

 have done much to promote science. It has been said that amateurs 

 at science do little in the more difficult subjects of investigation ; but 

 those who say so overlook the fact that when a man does do difficult 

 ■work they cease to call him in amateur, and class him with pro- 

 fessional men. It is a well-known fact that some of the greatest 

 honours in scientific work were won, and are being won, by men who 

 ■would be properly classed as amateurs — men who have stolen from 

 leisure and from sleep the hours necessary for their favourite study. 

 It is a mistake to class all amateurs as alike. As well say that all 

 business men are alike. Science seems ever to point forward. The 

 question answered to-day suggests two for to-morrow. There may 

 be no halting-place, and none is desired. Obedience to the law of 

 ■service develops into a service of love, and the search for truth is 

 the pleasure of existence. And if we are true to our colours we 

 we will see that truth is not stored away in dusty papers, but pub- 

 lished to the world, so that every one may see what and how it is. 

 The British Association has put the best men to do this, and 

 •to publish the known facts in every science to the world, and has 

 found this the best method of helping that great majority 

 who are ready and willing to help if taken up to the 

 front and shown clearly the boundary between what is 

 known and what is unknown. It is this noble example 

 that we wish to follow. The Australian Association is for the ad- 

 vancement of science, and if it fails in that it will fall to pieces. 

 But it is not the hobby of a few individuals or of one colony ; it 

 takes in all who wish to advance science in all the colonies it meets 

 here this year — in Melbourne, probably, next year, going to another 

 colony every year, gathering up the enthusiasm of each colony in 



turn, and will come back to us when we are very glad to receive it. 

 By its charier the association is bound to promote tne intercourse of 

 scientific men and lovers of science ; to give a stronger impulse and 

 a more systematic direction to scientific inquiry ; to obtain a public 

 recognition for the claims of science, and to endeavour by every 

 means in its power to promote scientific inquiry ; to grapple with 

 the scientific questions that affect the material advancement of this 

 portion of the British dominions— questions in chemistry, physics, 

 and geology ; in mining, mineralogy, and engineering ; in meteor- 

 ology, water conservation, and irrigation ; and every other subject 

 that may promote our national advancement. I hope you will not 

 think my subject is running away with me, for the experience of the 

 British Association fully justifies us in believing that we may expect 

 all this and much more from our association. We are often told of 

 the influence of science upon material advancement ; but there is 

 another thing that I should like to dwell upon, but that I fear to 

 keep you too long. We hear too little about the influence that 

 scientific work has upon a man's character. There is a science cul- 

 ture as well as a classical culture, and it would be worth while 

 tracing its influence upon those who get it, and through them upon 

 society. And we hear far too little about the influence which science 

 is having upon the young, by exercising their powers of observation 

 and reason on the phenomena of nature around them. Scientific 

 education is spreading through all classes of the community, and 

 slowly, but surely, like the advance of every great truth, the world 

 has learned to recognise the fact that science is the great lever in the 

 material advancement of the people ; nay, more, that we cannot 

 have material advancement without a previous advance in 

 science. If we are to have new processes in the arts, new applica- 

 tions of the laws of nature for the wellbeing of mankind, we must 

 first have the study of nature and the laws which govern its opera- 

 tions before we can hope to employ them for our advantage. In a 

 new country like this, with all its local variations in the laws of 

 nature, its uncultivated forest fruits and flowers, its unknown vege- 

 table and mineral wealth, the fact is forced upon us in a thousand 

 ways that we must know or we must suffer. And we use the word 

 science in its comprehensive sense. There have been those who 

 said that the proper study of mankind is man, and who, while strenu- 

 ously denying to this study the dignity of a science, have thought no 

 other science worthy of culture. And there have been others who 

 have asserted that man's only study was nature in the things around 

 him, neglecting altogether the science of man. But man and nature 

 are correlative, and therefore true science must embrace both 

 studies. And even in the things around us we must not take the 

 vulgar view, which only sees the necessity for cultivating those 

 branches of science that are direct producers of gold and minerals. 

 As a well-known politician in another colony once said to me when 

 I asked him to spend a few pounds on pure science, " Will it affect 

 the price of beef and mutton 1 If not I won't spend a shilling on 

 it." Unfortunately he is not alone in his opinion ; there are many 

 whose only measure for scientific value is a coin of the realm. If 

 there is to be a true advance of science it will not come from one- 

 sided efforts. Each branch must be pushed forward in its own 

 special direction, and in — what is just as important— its relation to 

 all other branches of science. Science stands or falls as a whole ; 

 if we limit it to certain purposes or persons it ceases to be science, 

 and becomes mere empiricism. This association stands as a pro- 

 test against the short-sighted and utilitarian policy of those who 

 would cultivate only what they characteristically call the bread-and- 

 butter sciences. Our purpose is the advancement of all the sciences, 

 believing, as we do, that the true advance of one is inseparably con- 

 nected with that of all the others, and by the advance we do not 

 simply mean the increase in knowledge of its laws, but also in the 

 application of it to the wants of mankind. Too often in the past the 

 advance of science has been checked for generations by those who 

 said they knew that the earth stood still, and who did their best 

 to make it do so, and our protest is against the views of men of the 

 same stamp in the present day, who think they know everything and 

 select what is useful. Is that dreamy astronomer to be banished 

 because he sits in some darkened dome peering through his tele- 

 scope at some distant star, and wanting to know where it is. 

 What has that got to do with the material advancement of the 

 people ? says the Utilitarian. Nay, that very quest, turned into a 

 demand for better mechanical contrivances, better glass, and better 

 workmen, led Fraunhofer to strain every nerve to meet it. He ex- 

 amined light in its passage through lenses most minutely, and thus 

 learnt how to correct the previous errors in his telescopes, and while 

 he did that he found those definite lines in the spectrum that will for 

 ever be known by bis name. He recognised their exact coincidence 

 with those given by well-known terrestrial substances, and so gave 

 the world the spectroscope, that most wonderful instrument work- 

 ing out through the most abstract science, the quickest, most 

 perfect — ay, even the cheapest way of answering a thousand 



