i5 
1880.] Scientific Progress of the Past Year. 
is not because this is a generation of more feeble folk, or 
because there has been any lack of elasticity of mind or of 
fertility in idea, but because their minds and their ideas 
have been more under control, and because these men have 
succeeded in that which their great predecessor always 
missed, namely, mastery over themselves. 
The relations between the Mechanism of the Heavens 
and the History of the Earth have for some years past been 
the subject of speculation and of argument amongst many 
prominent men of science. And calculations have been 
made, tending more or less to confirm the views of the 
various writers on the subjeCT But so vast is the problem, 
so multifarious in its data, so complicated in its laws, that 
eager as we are to grasp anything solid or well founded in 
the inquiry, we are constantly left with a feeling that we 
may have clutched at a mere floating weed, when we hoped 
that we had laid hold of something firmly rooted. And on 
this account we may look with unusual satisfaction at the 
massive and philosophical research in which Mr. George 
Darwin is engaged, and of which we have already some 
substantial instalments. It consists in an investigation on 
the precession and tides in a viscous spheroid, in which he 
applies his results to a discussion of the internal condition 
of the several planets, and of the evolution of the moon and 
other satellites from the primitive nebulae. 
I now pass on to mention briefly a few other subjects 
which, outside our immediate sphere of aCtion, form sub- 
stantial elements of the scientific progress of the past year, 
and among these I should first mention Meteorology, be- 
cause the Council, to whom in this country the subject is 
entrusted, is nominated by the Royal Society. 
The science of Meteorology has, during the last few years, 
attracted an increasing amount of attention, more perhaps 
from its close relation to the interests of all classes of the 
community than from the definiteness or novelty of the 
scientific results to which it has led. 
The second International Congress of Meteorology met 
at Rome in April of the present year, on the invitation of 
the Italian Government ; an interval of nearly five years 
having elapsed since the date of the first Congress, which 
was held at Vienna in 1874. The main objeCt of these 
meetings has been to introduce greater uniformity of method 
into the meteorological systems of Europe, without at- 
tempting, however, to pledge the different Governments to 
any definite engagements on the subject. With this view a 
permanent International Committee has been copstitued, tq 
