THE COUNCIL, 
With a just sense, therefore, of the importance to science, of 
combining the Philosophical Societies dispersed through the 
different provinces of the kingdom in a general co-operative 
union, the British Association has not only invited them to 
join its Meetings, but has given to those whom they may 
specially depute to represent them, the privilege of becoming 
Members of the Committee by which its affairs are conducted. 
It appears to the Council that in availing themselves of the 
bond of connection thus offered, Societies will not only contri¬ 
bute most essentially to the success of this extensive plan, but 
will add greatly to their own efficiency. When individuals meet 
for scientific objects, the effect of the general effort, emulation, 
and example is to produce a spirit of exertion which gives to 
such Meetings their principal value. And if Societies shall 
concur, as is now proposed, in thus meeting each other, in pro¬ 
posing certain common objects, in communicating from year to 
year the means which they are using, and the progress which 
they are making, it seems impossible that this should be done 
in the presence of an assembly concentrating a great part of the 
scientific talent of the nation without kindling an increased 
ardour of emulous activity; it seems impossible that the 
Deputies of any Society should attend such Meetings without 
bringing back into its bosom an enlargement of views, and 
conveying to its members new lights of knowledge, new motives 
to inquiry, and new encouragement to perseverance. 
The actual assembling of one of the Meetings at the place 
in which any Society is established, has a tendency to produce 
the same effect in a still more powerful degree, and the Council 
does not hesitate to state that this Institution has received a 
sensible impulse, in all these respects, from the visit with which 
it has recently been honoured. The plan, indeed, on which this 
Society was first founded, and on which it has always been 
conducted, is in the spirit of the design which may now be 
