11(3 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
[August 5, 1871. 
Association to the metropolis of Scotland I am naturally 
reminded of the small hand of pilgrims who carried the 
seeds of this Institution into the more genial soil of our 
sister land.” .... “ Sir John Robison, Professor John¬ 
ston, and Professor J. D. Forbes were the earliest friends 
and promoters of the British Association. They went 
to York to assist in its establishment, and they found 
there the very men who were qualified to foster and 
organize it. The Rev. Mr. Vernon Harcourt, whose 
name cannot be mentioned here without gratitude, had 
provided laws for its government, and, along with Mr. 
Phillips, the oldest and most valuable of our office- 
bearei'S, had made all those arrangements by which its 
success wa 3 ensured. Headed by Sir Roderick Murchi¬ 
son, one of the very earliest and most active advocates of 
the Association, there assembled at York about 200 of 
the friends of science.” 
The statement I have read contains no allusion to the 
real origin of the British Association. This blank in my 
predecessor’s historical sketch I am able to fill in from 
words written by himself twenty years earlier. Through 
the kindness of Professor Phillips I am enabled to read 
to you part of a letter to -him at York, written by David 
Brewster from Allcrly by Melrose, on the 23rd of 
February, 1831: — 
“ Dear Sir.—I have taken the liberty of writing you 
on a subject of considerable importance. It is proposed 
to establish a British Association of men of science simi¬ 
lar to that which has existed for eight years in Germany, | 
and which is now patronized by the most powerful 
sovereigns of that part of Europe. The arrangements 
for the first meeting are in progress; and it is contem- ! 
plated that it shall be held in York, as the most central 
city for the three kingdoms. My object in writing you 
at present is to beg that you would ascertain if York I 
will furnish the accommodation necessary for so large a 1 
meeting (which may perhaps consist of above 100 indi¬ 
viduals), if the Philosoythical Society would enter zea¬ 
lously into the plan, and if the mayor and influential 
persons in the town and in the vicinity would be likely 
to promote its objects. The principal object of the 
Society would be to make the cultivators of science 
acquainted with each other, to stimulate one another to 
new exertions, and to bring the objects of science more 
before the public eye, and to take measures for advancing 
its interests and accelerating its progress.” 
Of the little band of four pilgrims from Scotland to 
York, not one now survives. Of the seven first Asso¬ 
ciates one more has gone over to the majority since the 
Association last met. Vernon Harcourt is no longer 
with us; but his influence remains, a beneficent and 
surely therefore never dying influence. He was a geo-! 
logist and chemist, a large-hearted lover of science, and I 
an unwearied worker for its advancement. Brewster 
was the founder of the British Association; Vernon 5 
Harcourt was its law-giver. His code remains to this 
day the law of the Association. 
On the 11 th of May last, Sir John Ilerschel died, in 
the eightieth year of his age. The name of Herschel is 
a household word throughout Great Britain and Ireland 
yes, and through the whole civilized world. We, of 
this generation, have, from our lessons of childhood up¬ 
wards, learned to see in Herschel, father and son, a pne- 5 
sidium et dulce deem of the precious treasure of British j 
scientific fame. W hen geography, astronomy, and the 
use of the globes were still taught, even to poor children, ! 
as a pleasant and profitable sequel to “reading, writing, 1 
and arithmetic,” which of us did not revere the great : 
telescope of Sir William Herschel (one of the Hundred j 
Wonders of the World), and learn with delight, directly ; 
or indirectly from the charming pages of Sir John; 
Herschel’s book, about the sun and his spots, and the! 
fiery tornadoes sweeping over his surface, and about the 
planets, and Jupiter’s belts, and Saturn’s rings, and the 
fixed stars with their proper motions, and the double 
stars, and coloured stars, and the nebulae discovered by 
the great telescope ? Of Sir John Herschel it may 
indeed be said, nil t dig it quod non ornavit. 
A monument to Faraday and a monument to Herschel, 
Britain must have. The nation wall not be satisfied with. 
anything, however splendid, done by private subscrip¬ 
tion. A national monument, the more humble in point 
of expense the better, is required to satisfy that honour¬ 
able pride with which a high-spirited nation cherishes 
the memory of its great men. But for the glory oF 
Faraday or the glory of Herschel, is a monument wanted ? 
No! 
“ What needs ray Shakesnere for his honoured bones 
The labour of an age in piled stones ? 
Or that his hallow T ed reliques should be hid 
Under a siar-ypointing pyramid? 
Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, 
What need’st thou such weak wetness of thy name l 
Thou, in our wonder and astonishment. 
Hast built thyself a live-long monument. 
•Jfc *54; -Jfc 
W 'A' TV TV* 
And, so sepulchred, in such pomp dost lie, 
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.” 
With regard to Sir John Herschel’s scientific work, 
on the present occasion I can but refer briefly to a few 
points which seem to mo salient in his physical and 
mathematical writings. First, I remark that he has put 
forward, most instructively and profitably to his readers,, 
the general theory of periodicity in dynamics, and has; 
urged the practical utilizing of it, especially in meteo¬ 
rology, by the harmonic analysis. It is purely by an 
application of this principle and practical method that 
the British Association’s Committee on Tides has, for the* 
last four years, been, and still is, working towards the; 
solution of the grand problem proposed forty-eight years- 
ago by Thomas Young in the following words:— 
“ There is, indeed, little doubt that, if wc were pro¬ 
vided with a sufficiently correct scries of minutely accu¬ 
rate observations on the tides, made not merely with a 
viow r to the times of low and high water only, but rather, 
to the heights at the intermediate times, wc might form,, 
by degrees, with the assistance of the theory contained, 
in this article* only, almost as perfect a sot of tables for 
the motions of the ocean as we have already obtained for- 
those of the celestial bodies, which are the more imme¬ 
diate objects of the attention of the practical astronomer.” 
Sir John Herschel’s discovery of a right or left-handed 
asymmetry in the outward form of crystals, such as 
quartz, which in their inner molecular structure possess 
the helicoidal rotational property in reference to the 
plane of polarization of light, is one of the notable points 
of meeting between natural history and natural philo¬ 
sophy. His observations on “epipolic dispersion” gave- 
Stokes the clue by which ho was led to his great disco¬ 
very of the change of periodic time experienced by light 
in falling on certain substances and being dispersively 
reflected from them. In respect to pure mathematics, 
Sir John Hei’schel did more, I believe, than any other 
man to introduce into Britain the powerful methods and. 
the valuable notation of modern analysis. A remarkable- 
modo of symbolism had freshly appeared, I believe, in. 
the works of Laplace, and possibly of other French 
mathematicians; it certainly appeared in Fourier, but 
whether before or after Herschel’s work I cannot say. 
With the French writers, however, this was rather a, 
short method of writing formulae than the analytical 
engine which it became in the hands of Herschel and 
British followers, especially Sylvester and Gregory (eom- 
petitors with Green in the Cambridge Mathematical 
Tripos struggle of 1837), and Boole and Cayley. This- 
method was greatly advanced by Gregory, who first gave 
to its working-power a secure and philosophical founda¬ 
tion, and so prepared the way for the marvellous exten- 
* Young’s; written in 1823 for the Supplement to the* 
£ Encyclopaedia Uritannica.’ 
