486 



Address of the General Secretaries 



science, few, perhaps, operate more widely than the impedi- 

 ment to a free and rapid communication of thought and of ex- 

 periments, occasioned by difference of language. It appeared 

 to the British Association, that this impediment might in some 

 degree be removed, as far as regards our own country, by pro- 

 curing, and causing to be published, translations of foreign 

 scientific memoirs judiciously selected. Accordingly at each 

 of the meetings at Newcastle and Birmingham a grant of 

 100/. was placed at the disposal of a committee appointed to 

 carry this purpose into effect. Aided by the contributions of 

 several translations which have been gratuitously presented to 

 them, the committee have been enabled, in the two last years, 

 to publish fourteen memoirs on subjects of prominent interest 

 and importance in the mathematical and physical sciences, 

 bearing the names of some of the most eminent of the conti- 

 nental philosophers. 



Such, gentlemen, is an imperfect review of our recent pro- 

 ceedings. In two essential respects the British Association 

 differs from all the annual scientific meetings of the Continent, 

 no one of which has printed transactions or employed money 

 in aiding special researches. We also differ from them in the 

 communications which, in the name of the representatives of 

 science assembled from all parts of the United Kingdom, we 

 feel ourselves authorized to make from time to time to the 

 Government, on subjects connected with the scientific cha- 

 racter of the nation. On our first visit to Scotland, for ex- 

 ampie, we felt it to be an opprobrium that this enlightened 

 kingdom should, in one essential feature of civilisation, be still 

 behind many of the continental states, and we prepared an 

 address to his late Majesty's Government, urging strongly the 

 necessity of the construction, without delay, of a map of Scot- 

 land, founded on the trigonometrical survey. Representa- 

 tions to the same effect have since been made by the Royal 

 Society of Scotland, and by the Highland Society, and the 

 subject has now engaged that attention, which will, we trust, 

 soon procure for this country the first sheets of a large and 

 complete map. 



If then it be asked, why are the men of highest station 

 happy to associate and mingle with us in official duties?— why 

 have the heads of the noble houses of Fitzwilliam, Lans- 

 downe,* Northampton, Burlington, Northumberland, and 

 Breadalbane, alternated in presiding over us, with our Buck- 

 lands, our Sedgwicks, our Brisbanes, our Lloyds, and our 



* The Marquis of Lansdowne, who had accepted the office, was prevented 

 from attending by deep domestic affliction, and the Marquis of Northamp- 

 ton cheerfully supplied his place. 



