92 Proceedings of the British Association. 



witness the immense and admirably arranged catalogues of stars, 

 which have been and still are pouring in from all quarters upon our 

 astronomy, so soon as the want of extensive catalogues came to be 

 felt and declared. What we now want is thought, steadily directed 

 to single objects, with a determination to eschew the besetting evil of 

 our age — the temptation to squander and dilute it upon a thousand 

 different lines of inquiry. The philosopher must be wedded to his 

 subject if he would see the children and the children's children of 

 his intellect flourishing in honour around him. 



The establishment of astronomical observatories has been, in all 

 ages and nations, the first public recognition of science as an inte- 

 grant part of civilization. Astronomy, however, is only one out of 

 many sciences, which can be advanced by a combined system of 

 observation and calculation carried on uninterruptedly, where, in the 

 way of experiment, man has no control, and whose only handle is the 

 continual observation of Nature, as it developes itself under our eyes, 

 and a constant collateral endeavour to concentrate the records of 

 that observation into empirical laws in the first instance, and to 

 ascend from those laws to theories. Speaking in a utilitarian point 

 of view, the globe which we inhabit is quite as important a subject of 

 scientific inquiry as the stars. We depend for our bread of life and 

 every comfort, on its climates and seasons, on the movement of its 

 winds and waters. We guide ourselves over the ocean, when astro- 

 nomical observations fail, by our knowledge of the laws of its 

 magnetism ; we learn the sublimest lessons from the records of its 

 geological history ; and the great facts which its figure, magnitude, 

 and attraction, offer to mathematical inquiry form the very basis of 

 Astronomy itself. Terrestrial Physics, therefore, form a subject 

 every way worthy to be associated with Astronomy as a matter of 

 universal interest and public support, and one which cannot be 

 adequately studied except in the way in which Astronomy itself has 

 been — by permanent establishments keeping up an unbroken series 

 of observation: — but with this difference, that whereas the chief data 

 of Astronomy might be supplied by the establishment of a very few 

 well worked observatories properly disposed in the two hemispheres 

 — the gigantic problems of meteorology, magnetism, and oceanic 

 movements can only be resolved by a far more extensive geographical 



