598 Proceedings of the British Association. 



in this respect I may mention, in addition to those I have slightly 

 enumerated. I do not refer in detail to other most important oper- 

 ations which owe their orgin to this Society — the Magnetic Expedition 

 now in progress ; the extension of the trigonometrical survey on an ex- 

 panded scale, suggested by you, and liberally adopted by the Board 

 of Ordnance — these and many other similar matters are recorded in 

 your Transactions ; and to those Transactions, rather than to any 

 defective catalogue of mine, I would refer those who may doubt the 

 benefit of our labours. The most recent instance, however, I cannot 

 omit ; 1 mean the important accession to the means of this Society of a 

 fixed position, a place for deposit, regulation, and comparison of instru- 

 ments, and for many more purposes than I could name, perhaps 

 even more than are yet contemplated, in the Observatory at Kew. 

 This building was standing useless. The Council of the Association 

 approached the throne with a petition that they might occupy it, and I 

 am happy to say that the sceptre was gracefully held towards them ; 

 and I think this transaction a fair instance of that species of connexion 

 between science and government, which I hope may always be cultiva- 

 ted in this country. I am informed that the purposes to which this 

 building is readily and immediately applicable, are of an importance 

 which none but men advanced in science can appreciate. You will hear 

 further of them in the Committee of Recommendations. 



With reference to the past transactions of the Society, it would 

 be a presumption in me to enter upon any detail. I confess, however, 

 that on looking over the printed Transactions of the year 1839, my eye 

 was caught by a paragraph of the introduction to Prof. Owen's treatise 

 on the fossil reptiles of Great Britain, in which he avows that but 

 for the assistance of the Association he should have shrunk from 

 the undertaking of that work. The context to this passage is a vast 

 one. Those who wish to feel the entire force of the commentary it 

 conveys, must follow it through the pages of subtle disquisition which 

 succeed it. I ask you, learned and unlearned alike, to give but a 

 glance at those pages. See how the greatest — am I wrong in call- 

 ing him so ? — of the British disciples of Cuvier walks among the shat- 

 tered remnants of former worlds, with order and arrangement in his 

 train. Mark how, page after page, and specimen after specimen, the 

 dislocated vertebrae fall into their places, — how the giants of former days 

 assume their due lineaments and proportions, some shorn of the undue 

 dimensions ascribed to them on the first flush of discovery, others 

 expanded into even greater bulk, all alike bearing the indelible mark 

 of adaptation to the modes of their forgotten existence, and pregnant 



