2 
Monday , 7th December 1857. 
At the request of the Council, Dr Christison, V.P., deli- 
vered the following Address from the Chair : — 
On this annual occasion of resuming the Ordinary Meetings of 
the Royal Society, it becomes us, as almost a duty which we owe to 
science, and to our country, whose science we in some measure repre- 
sent, that we should review what has been done by the Society dur- 
ing the past year, to merit the position which it holds in public 
opinion, and the title which it pre-eminently enjoys. 
I believe it may be allowed me to congratulate you on the result 
of such a retrospect of your proceedings. We cannot, indeed, boast 
of any great or prominent discovery in the physical or natural sciences 
having been first announced during last Session in this Hall, or first 
given to the world in our Transactions for that period. But in 
truth, the past year has been nowhere, to my knowledge, marked by 
any such event in any country. Nay, for several years it has been 
scarcely possible to place the finger on any great discovery made by 
the cultivators of natural and physical science in any quarter of the 
world. We seem to be living in one of those not uncommon pauses in 
the progress of science, during which discovery, in its grand significa- 
tion, is at rest, but in which prior discovery undergoes consolidation, 
extension, and application; and in which a breathing-time is obtained, 
and a firm vantage-ground whence, without doubt, another advance 
will be made ere long to other conquests; and the development, pos- 
sibly, of new elements and new powers, — but certainly of new gene- 
ralizations and new laws, — will reward the researches of some higher 
mind, which, without the preparative works of detail of the present 
day, might remain barren in discovery and invention. 
In such unobtrusive, and yet, as we may be permitted to hope, 
not unproductive labours, this Society may claim to have taken a fair 
share. Without referring, as might be justly done, to many papers 
of a more fugitive or less elaborate character which have been pro- 
duced to our Ordinary Meetings, it will be sufficient for me to call 
attention to the recent Fasciculus of our Transactions for the year 
