728 Meeting of the British Association. [Oct., 



are prepared to invest in large ventures, and to reap harvests of bank- 

 notes." And lie glances too at the ledgers of past years (referring 

 his hearers to the ' Annual Volumes of Transactions ' of thirty 

 years), and tells them they will there read of profits heaped upon 

 profits, concluding with a sigh that there is only one thing to be 

 regretted ; he is afraid that some of their ventures have been more 

 profitable to third parties than they have been to themselves. But 

 then he consoles himself with the philanthropic reflection, that it is all 

 good for trade, and with that kindness of heart which characterizes 

 old-established concerns having a larger business than they are able 

 to manage themselves, he congratulates the partners in having been 

 the means of starting a number of new establishments ; and as these 

 have after all been feeders, and have added eclat to the parent 

 Congress, " the regret was soon lost in the gratification of knowing 

 that other and equally beneficial channels of publication have been 

 found " for transactions which the books of the great house were too 

 small to contain. 



These few remarks will convey to the reader some idea of what he 

 may expect to find in the Address of the President, who has but little 

 to say of the progress of Science since the last meeting, for there has 

 been a remarkable lull in the business of scientific discovery and 

 research. He touches cursorily upon the subject of Eadiation, 

 showing how recent experiments upon the passage of light have 

 modified our ideas concerning the distances of the heavenly bodies 

 from this world ; and glances en passant at the physical and probable 

 vital conditions of other spheres, and at the influence of changes in 

 the sun's photosphere in creating magnetic disturbances upon the 

 earth's surface. Spectral analysis, as applied to the determination of 

 cosmical elements in the heavens, whether in suns, planets, satellites, 

 or nebulae, receives a passing notice ; so, too, the application of 

 Photography to Astronomical Science ; and then the recent achieve- 

 ments of meteorologists are dwelt upon, and a touching reference is 

 made to the " gentle spirit which employed this knowledge in the 

 cause of humanity," and " which passed away, leaving an example of 

 unselfish devotion," — the late Admiral Fitzroy. 



Crystallography and Chemistry (more especially synthetic) are 

 brought under notice, and then we have a bright little panorama of 

 the progress of Geological Science, and " step by step we are guided 

 through the old Cambrian and Silurian systems, rich in Trilobites 

 and Brachiopoda, the delights of Salter and Davidson ; with Agassiz 

 and Miller and Egerton we read the history of the strange old fishes 

 of the Devonian rocks ; Brongniart, and Goppert, and Dawson, and 

 Binney, and Hooker unveil the mystery of the mighty forests now 

 converted to coal ; Mantell and Owen and Huxley restore for us the 

 giant reptiles of the Lias, the Oolite, and the Wealden ; Edwards and 

 Wright almost revive the beauteous corals and Echinodermata ; which 

 with all the preceding tribes have come and gone before the dawn of 

 the later periods, when fragments of mammoths and hippopotami were 

 buried in caves and river sediments to reward the researches of 

 Cuvier and Buckland, Prestwich and Christy, Lartet and Falconer." 



