38 
FIRST REPORT- 1831. 
we propose should be not only annual, like the rest of the 
machinery by which it is kept in motion, hut annually changed ; 
in order at once to extend the interest which they may be sup¬ 
posed to kindle, and to limit the burthen which they will impose; 
leaving it for future consideration, whether the appointment of 
more ‘permanent Secretaries may not be necessary to secure a 
steady and uniform course : and we recommend that, when the 
General Committee is not sitting, the whole business of the 
Association shall be committed to the Office-bearers, assisted in 
scientific matters by the Members of the Sub-Committees, and 
in promoting the interests and objects of the Association in par¬ 
ticular places, by the cooperation of Local Committees. 
“ I have now arrived at the last point to which it remains for 
me to advert—namely, the selection of the matter which is to 
engage the attention of the Meetings. It is evident that if the 
plan which I have thus far explained should be carried into 
effect, the deliberations of the Committee to be formed at the 
present Me ethig will provide the chief materials for the con¬ 
sideration of the next. Those investigations and those surveys 
of science which shall have been suggested and procured by 
the Committees and Officers of the Association, will be entitled 
to the priority, though other communications maybe accepted as 
far as the duration of the session will allow. Professor Whewell 
conceives f that if this Meeting were to request from one or 
two among the most eminent men in the various branches of 
science, statements to be presented next year of the recent 
advances made in each department, and the subjects of re¬ 
search which they consider at present the most important and 
promising, such a request would he respectfully attended to.’ 
Gentlemen, I do not doubt that it would; neither do I doubt 
that a request from this Meeting would be successful in pro¬ 
curing new researches to be made; and should the funds of the 
Association hereafter admit of its going further, and offering 
prizes for particular investigations,—then would another pro¬ 
lific source be opened from which the scientific materials of our 
Meetings would be derived. 
This, indeed, would only be another and a very powerful 
method of carrying on the system which we recommend of ad¬ 
vancing science in determinate lines of direction ; a method, 
which, though scarcely practised in this country, has been 
found eminently successful abroad. Dr. Brewster, I believe, 
will confirm me in this statement; for he will recollect that we 
owe to a prize-memoir, the first announcement of that great 
optical discovery, that light may be polarized by reflection from 
the surface of transparent bodies, a discovery which has since 
