( 546 ) 
O&ober, 
PROGRESS IN SCIENCE. 
THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF 
SCIENCE. 
HE British Association has just concluded a highly successful meeting at 
1 Glasgow. The local arrangements were all that could be desired, while 
many of the papers read were of great scientific value. The number of 
members and associates present at the meeting was 2731. 
In his Inaugural Address, the President — Dr. Andrews, F.R.S. — first gave a 
masterly review of the progress of science, but while he alluded at considerable 
length to the results obtained by scientific men in England, America, France, 
Germany, Italy, and Russia, he made too slight a reference to his own 
brilliant physico-chemical researches, which have added so much to our know- 
ledge of the laws and composition of gases, to the nature and properties of ozone, 
and to the heat changes in chemical reactions, &c. In speaking of the North Polar 
Expedition, he referred to the opinion of those who hold that a full survey of the 
ArCtic regions can never be of such value as to justify rhe risk and cost which 
must be incurred, and said that it was not by such cold calculations that great dis- 
coveries were made or great enterprises achieved. There was an inward and 
irrepressible impulse — in individuals called a spirit of adventure, in nations a 
spirit of enterprise — which impelled mankind forward to explore every part of 
the world we inhabit, however inhospitable or difficult of access ; and if the 
country claiming the foremost place among maritime nations shrunk from an 
undertaking because it was perilous, other countries would not be slow to 
seize the post of honour. If it were possible for man to reach the poles of 
the earth, whether north or south, the feat must sooner or later be accom- 
plished ; and the country of the successful adventurers would be thereby raised 
in the sale of nations. He then alluded to the transit of Venus ; to the con- 
firmation by M. Cornu of Foucault’s calculation of the distance of the earth 
from the sun ; to Mr. Christie’s confirmation of Dr. Huggins’s discovery that 
some of the fixed stars are moving towards and some receding from our 
system ; to Mr. Stone’s confirmation of Prof. C. A. Young’s observation that 
bright lines, corresponding to the ordinary lines of Fraunhofer reversed, may 
be seen in the lower strata of the solar atmosphere for a few moments during 
a total eclipse ; to the observations of Roscoe and Schuster on the absorption 
bands of potassium and sodium ; to Mr. Lockyer’s investigation on the 
absorbtive powers of metallic and metalloidal vapours at different tempera- 
tures ; to M. Lecoq de Boisbaudran’s discovery of the new metal — gallium; 
to the discoveries and researches of Sir Edward Sabine, Nordenskiold, 
Maskelyne, Lawrence Smith, Sorby, R. Apjohn, Daubree, Wohler, and Tscher- 
mak in connection with meteoric science. 
In noticing the important services which the Kew Observatory has 
rendered to meteorology and to solar physics, Dr. Andrews expressed the hope 
that England would not lag behind in providing physical observatories on a 
scale worthy of the nation and commensurate with the importance of the 
objeCt. 
After a reference to the organisation in this country of a system of reporting 
by telegraph the state of the weather at selected stations to a central office, 
so that notice of the probable approach of storms may be given to the sea- 
ports, and also to Dr. Robinson’s observations at the Observatory of Armagh, 
which led to the discovery that the mean velocity of the wind is greatest in 
the S.S.W. oCtant and least in the opposite one, and that the amount of wind 
attains a maximum in January, after which it steadily decreases with one 
