4 
importance to provide a more suitable place for 
the preservation of the property of the Society, 
as the cases in the Windmill have suffered 
considerably during the late heavy rains ; hap- 
pily but little damage has at present been done, 
but unless some precautions are taken, we can 
hardly hope to escape much longer. 
“ The library is now open for the use of 
members, and a few scientific periodicals are 
received by every mail. 
“ The Council has again to acknowledge 
with thanks the kindness of the Mayor and 
Corporation of Brisbane in allowing the 
Society the use of the room in which the meet- 
ings are held, and for permission to place 
therein a case containing the books belonging 
to the Society. 
“ In conclusion, the Council cannot look back 
upon the past year otherwise than as one of 
fair success ; and they trust that members will 
endeavour to provide a paper for each evening 
of meeting, as they afford the greatest amount 
of interest, if bearing the stamp of careful 
thought or original observation. 
** John Bliss, 
“ Honorary Secretary" 
After the adoption of the Report, the Pee- 
flIHENT delivered the following 
ADDEESS. 
Since our last annual meeting there has been 
a meeting (the thirty-sixth) of the British 
Association for the Advancement of Science, 
that great assembly of scientific notables in 
which the latest advances of knowledge are 
discussed, and in the annual Reports of which 
the successive states of the sciences at given 
epochs are recorded and criticised. The address 
of the President for the current year, Mr. 
Grove, • Q.C., is an important and interesting 
one, and my purpose is to lay an abstract of it 
before you, followed by some remarks arising 
out of it. Mr. Grove says that in the study of 
our own planet and the organic beings with 
which it is crowded, and in so much of the uni- 
verse as vision, aided by the telescope, has 
brought within the scope of observation, the 
present century has surpassed any antecedent 
period of equal duration ; that to the more 
practical minds the reality, the certainty, and 
the progressive character of the acquisitions of 
natural science, and the enormously increased 
means which its applications give, have im* 
pressed its importance as a minister to daily 
wants, and a contributor to ever increasing 
material comforts, luxury, and power; that an 
important cause of the rapid advance of 
science . is the growth of associations for 
promoting the progress either of physical know- 
ledge generally, or of special branches of it. 
Then, after pointing out the advantages con- 
ferred by such societies, the President says 
that every votary of physical science must be 
anxious to see it recognised by those insti- 
tutions of the country which can to the great- 
est degree promote its cultivation and reap from 
it the greatest benefit ; that the principal edu- 
cational establishments on the one hand, and 
on the other the Government, in many of its 
departments, are the institutions which may 
best fulfil these conditions ; that little can be 
achieved in scientific research without an 
acquaintance with it in youth, and that, while 
he would never wish to see the study of lan- 
guages, of history, of all those refined asso- 
ciations which the past has transmitted to us, 
neglected, still that there is room both for 
those studies and the study of the sciences ; 
and he expressed a hope that the slight infil- 
tration of scientific studies, now happily com- 
menced, will extend till it occupies its fair space 
in the education of the young ; and that those 
who may be able learnedly to discourse on the 
iESolic digamma, will not he ashamed of know- 
ing the principles of an air-pump, an electrical 
maehine, or a telescope, and will not, as Bacon 
complained of his contemporaries, despise 
such knowledge as something mean and 
mechanical. “ To assert," says Mr. Grove, “ that 
the great departments of Government should 
encourage physical science, may appear a 
truism, and yet it is but of late that it has been 
seriously done ; now, the habit of consulting 
men of science on important questions of 
national interest, is becoming a recognised prac- 
tice." And in a time which may seem long to 
individuals, but is short in the history of a 
nation, a more definite sphere of useful- 
ness will, he has no doubt, be provided 
for those duly qualified men who 
may be content to give up the 
more tempting study of abstract science for 
that of its practical applications. The Presi- 
dent then submits certain views of what ha?, 
within a comparatively recent period, been 
accomplished by science ; what have been the 
steps leading to the attained results, and what, 
as far as an opinion may fairly be formed, 
is the general character pervading modern dis- 
covery. He thinks that each President may 
properly enounce his own view of the general 
progress of science, and that the confining him 
to a mere resume of what has taken place since 
a’previous meeting, would limit his means of 
usefulness, and render his discourse rather an 
annual register than an instructive es3ay. Mr. 
Grove then gives, as the key to hi3 discourse, 
the word “ Continuity," and the idea that all 
knowledge is either attaiued by steps so ex- 
tremely small as to form really a continuous 
ascent ; or, when distinct results, apparently 
isolated, have been obtained, that then, by the 
subsequent progress of science, intermediate 
links have been discovered uniting the ap- 
parently segregated instances with other more 
familiarphenomena; that in existingphenomena, 
graduation from the like to the seemingly un- 
like prevails ; and in the changes which take 
place in time, gradual progress is, and ap- 
parently must be, the course of nature. He 
then applies his view to the recent progress 
