THE COUNCIL, 
3 
the principal promoters of the Meeting, to propose a plan for 
the conduct of it, and for the establishment of a general 
system on which similar Meetings might continue to be 
conducted hereafter. 
It is not requisite, in this Report, to enter into a detailed 
account of the provisions of this plan, because they are on the 
point of being published in the Report of the British Associa¬ 
tion for the advancement of Science, by the order of the 
Committee appointed to revise them. The general principles 
which distinguish it from the plan of the German Meetings 
are these : in the first place, instead of confining the Meetings 
to authors only and professed men of science, whilst it invites 
such persons to be the leaders and rulers of the Association, it 
aims also at diffusing more widely the spirit of scientific inquiry, 
and bringing new labourers into the field; in the second 
place, instead of being content with deriving indirect advantage 
from the Meetings, it employs them expressly as the means of 
giving a powerful impulse and determinate direction to philo¬ 
sophical inquiry, and of carrying on the advancement of 
science by a comprehensive system of co-operative exertion. 
The object of this system is not only to give connection to 
the efforts of insulated inquirers, but to link Societies them¬ 
selves together, in unity of purpose and in a common partici¬ 
pation and division of labour. There are many important 
questions in philosophy, and some entire departments of science, 
the data of which are geographically distributed, and require 
to be collected by local observations extended over a whole 
country ; and this is true not only of those facts on which 
single sciences are founded, but of many which are of more 
enlarged application. Thus, for instance, were the elevation 
above the sea of all the low levels and chief heights and emi¬ 
nences in a country ascertained, so generally that every 
b 2 
