128 
JOHN PHILLIPS, F.R.S. 
stimulated me with a ready-made prospectus. I may say that it was 
the cheerful and engaging manners of young Phillips that went far in 
cementing us, and even then he gave signs of the eminence to which 
he afterwards arose in the numerous years in which he was the most 
efficient assistant general secretary of the body, until when, as the 
distinguished Reader of Geology in the University of Oxford, he pre- 
sided over the British Association at Birmingham. When, however, 
we were congregated from all parts, the feebleness of the body 
scientific was too apparent. From London we had no strong men of 
other branches of science, and I was but a young president of the 
geologists ; from Cambridge no one, but apologies from Whewell, 
Sedgwick, and others ; from Oxford we had Daubeny only, with 
apologies from Buckland and others. On the other hand, we had the 
Provost of Trinty College, Dublin, Dr. Lloyd, Dr. Dalton (from 
Manchester), and Sir David Brewster from Edinburgh. Thus there 
was just a nucleus, which, if well managed, might roll on to be a large 
ball, and admirably was it conducted by ^Ym. Vernon, for after 
opening the meeting in an earnest, solemn manner, the good Lord 
Fitzwilliam handed over the whole control to Harcourt, and left us. 
For my own part, I had plenty of matter wherewith to keep my 
geological section aUve, as, besides those I have mentioned, we had a 
tower of streng-th in old Wm. Smith, the father of English geology, 
and then resident at Scarbro' ; James Forbes, Tom Allen the 
minerologist, and Johnstone the chemist, from Edinburgh ; to say 
nothing of Harry Witham of Larting-ton (now an author on ''Fossil 
Flora ") and others, including Wm. Hutton, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, 
then strong upon his 'whin sill.' After all we were but a meagre squad 
to represent British science, and I never felt humbler in my life than 
when Harcourt, in an opening address, referred to me as representing 
London, hideed, Wm. Conybeare, afterwards Dean of Llandaff, 
had quizzed us unmercifully, as well as W. Broderip and Stokes and 
other men of science. The first of these had said that if a central 
part of England were chosen for the meeting, and the science of 
London and the south were to be weighed against the science of the 
north, the meeting ought to be held in the Zoological Gardens of the 
Regent's Park. It required, therefore, no little pluck to fight up 
