acquaintance of Tyndall at the meeting of the Association held in this town in 1851.

About forty-six years ago I first began to attend the meetings of the British Association; and I was elected one of your general secretaries about twenty-five years ago.

It is not unfitting, therefore, that I should recall to your minds the conditions under which science was pursued at the formation of the Association, as well as the very remarkable position which the Association has occupied in relation to science in this country.

Between the end of the sixteenth century and the early part of the present century several societies had been created to develop various branches of science. Some of these societies were established in London, and others in important provincial centres.

In 1831, in the absence of railways, communication between different parts of the country was slow and difficult. Science was therefore localised; and in addition to the universities in England, Scotland, and Ireland, the towns of Birmingham, Manchester, Plymouth and York each maintained an important nucleus of scientific research.

ORIGIN OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION.

Under these social conditions the British Association was founded in September 1831.

The general idea of its formation was derived from a migratory society which had been previously formed in Germany; but whilst the German society met for the special occasion on which it was summoned, and then dissolved, the basis of the British Association was continuity.

The objects of the founders of the British Association were enunciated in their earliest rules to be :

'To give a stronger impulse and a more systematic direction to scientific inquiry; to promote the intercourse of those who cultivated science in different parts of the British Empire with one another, and with foreign philosophers; to obtain a more general attention to the objects of science, and a removal of any disadvantages of a public kind which impede its progress.'

Thus the British Association for the Advancement of Science based its utility upon the opportunity it afforded for combination.

The first meeting of the Association was held at York with 353 members.

As an evidence of the want which the Association supplied, it may be mentioned that at the second meeting, which was held at Oxford, the number of members was 435. The third meeting, at Cambridge, numbered over 900 members, and at the meeting at Edinburgh in 1834 there were present 1,298 members.

At its third meeting, which was held at Cambridge in 1833, the Association, through the influence it had already acquired, induced the

Government to grant a sum of 500l. for the reduction of the astronomical observations of Baily. And at the same meeting the General Committee commenced to appropriate to scientific research the surplus from the subscriptions of its members. The committees on each branch of science were desired to select definite and important objects of science, which they may think most fit to be advanced by an application of the funds of the society, either in compensation for labour, or in defraying the expense of apparatus, or otherwise, stating their reasons for their selection, and, when they may think proper, designating individuals to undertake the desired investigations.'

The several proposals were submitted to the Committee of Recommendations, whose approval was necessary before they could be passed by the General Committee. The regulations then laid down still guide the Association in the distribution of its grants. At that early meeting the Association was enabled to apply 600l. to these objects.

I have always wondered at the foresight of the framers of the constitution of the British Association, the most remarkable feature of which is the lightness of the tie which holds it together. It is not bound by any complex central organisation. It consists of a federation of Sections, whose youth and energy are yearly renewed by a succession of presidents and vice-presidents, whilst in each Section some continuity of action is secured by the less movable secretaries.

The governing body is the General Committee, the members of which are selected for their scientific work; but their controlling power is tempered by the law that all changes of rules, or of constitution, should be submitted to, and receive the approval of, the Committee of Recommendations. This committee may be described as an ideal Second Chamber. It consists of the most experienced members of the Association.

The administration of the Association in the interval between annual meetings is carried on by the Council, an executive body, whose duty it is to complete the work of the annual meeting (a) by the publication of its proceedings; (b) by giving effect to resolutions passed by the General Committee; (c) it also appoints the Local Committee and organises the personnel of each Section for the next meeting.

I believe that one of the secrets of the long-continued success and vitality of the British Association lies in this purely democratic constitution, combined with the compulsory careful consideration which must be given to suggested organic changes.

The Association is now in the sixty-fifth year of its existence. In its origin it invited the philosophical societies dispersed throughout Great Britain to unite in a co-operative union.

Within recent years it has endeavoured to consolidate that union.

At the present time almost all important local scientific societies scattered throughout the country, some sixty-six in number, are in correspondence with the Association. Their delegates hold annual conferences at our meetings. The Association has thus extended the sphere of its action:

it places the members of the local societies engaged in scientific work in relation with each other, and brings them into co-operation with members of the Association and with others engaged in original investigations, and the papers which the individual societies publish annually are catalogued in our Report. Thus by degrees a national catalogue will be formed of the scientific work of these societies.

The Association has, moreover, shown that its scope is coterminous with the British Empire by holding one of its annual meetings at Montreal, and we are likely soon to hold a meeting in Toronto.

CONDITION OF CERTAIN SCIENCES AT THE FORMATION OF THE
BRITISH ASSOCIATION.

The Association, at its first meeting, began its work by initiating a series of reports upon the then condition of the several sciences.

A rapid glance at some of these reports will not only show the enormous strides which have been made since 1831 in the investigation of facts to elucidate the laws of Nature, but it may afford a slight insight into the impediments offered to the progress of investigation by the mental condition of the community, which had been for so long satisfied to accept assumptions without undergoing the labour of testing their truth by ascertaining the real facts. This habit of mind may be illustrated by two instances selected from the early reports made to the Association. The first is afforded by the report made in 1832, by Mr. Lubbock, on 'Tides.'

This was a subject necessarily of importance to England as a dominant power at sea. But in England records of the tides had only recently been commenced at the dockyards of Woolwich, Sheerness, Portsmouth, and Plymouth, on the request of the Royal Society, and no information had been collected upon the tides on the coasts of Scotland and Ireland.

The British Association may feel pride in the fact that within three years of its inception, viz. by 1834, it had induced the Corporation of Liverpool to establish two tide gauges, and the Government to undertake tidal observations at 500 stations on the coasts of Britain.

Another cognate instance is exemplified by a paper read at the second meeting, in 1832, upon the State of Naval Architecture in Great Britain. The author contrasts the extreme perfection of the carpentry of the internal fittings of the vessels with the remarkable deficiency of mathematical theory in the adjustment of the external form of vessels, and suggests the benefit of the application of refined analysis to the various practical problems which ought to interest shipbuilders-problems of capacity, of displacement, of stowage, of velocity, of pitching and rolling, of masting, of the effects of sails and of the resistance of fluids; and, moreover, suggests that large-scale experiments should be made by Government, to afford the necessary data for calculation.

Indeed, when we consider how completely the whole habit of mind of the populations of the Western world has been changed, since the beginning

of the century, from willing acceptance of authority as a rule of life to a universal spirit of inquiry and experimental investigation, is it not probable that this rapid change has arisen from society having been stirred to its foundations by the causes and consequences of the French Revolution!

One of the earliest practical results of this awakening in France was the conviction that the basis of scientific research lay in the accuracy of the standards by which observations could be compared; and the following principles were laid down as a basis for their measurements of length, weight, and capacity: viz. (1) that the unit of linear measure applied to matter in its three forms of extension, viz., length, breadth, and thickness, should be the standard of measures of length, surface, and solidity; (2) that the cubic contents of the linear measure in decimetres of pure water at the temperature of its greatest density should furnish at once the standard weight and the measure of capacity. The metric system did not come into full operation in France till 1840; and it is now adopted by all countries on the continent of Europe except Russia.

The standards of length which were accessible in Great Britain at the formation of the Association were the Parliamentary standard yard lodged in the Houses of Parliament (which was destroyed in 1834 in the fire which burned the Houses of Parliament); the Royal Astronomical Society's standard; and the 10-foot bar of the Ordnance Survey.

The first two were assumed to afford exact measurements at a given temperature. The Ordnance bar was formed of two bars on the principle of a compensating pendulum, and afforded measurements independent of temperature. Standard bars were also disseminated throughout the country, in possession of the corporations of various towns.

The British Association early recognised the importance of uniformity in the record of scientific facts, as well as the necessity for an easy method of comparing standards and for verifying differences between instruments and apparatus required by various observers pursuing similar lines of investigation. At its meeting at Edinburgh in 1834 it caused a comparison to be made between the standard bar at Aberdeen, constructed by Troughton, and the standard of the Royal Astronomical Society, and reported that the scale was exceedingly well finished; it was about ath of an inch shorter than the 5-feet of the Royal Astronomical Society's scale, but it was evident that a great number of minute, yet important, circumstances have hitherto been neglected in the formation of such scales, without an attention to which they cannot be expected to accord with that degree of accuracy which the present state of science demands.' Subsequently, at the meeting at Newcastle in 1863, the Association appointed a committee to report on the best means of providing for a uniformity of weights and measures with reference to the

The litre is the volume of a kilogramme of pure water at its maximum density, and is slightly less than the litre was intended to be, viz., one cubic decimetre. The weight of a cubic decimetre of pure water is 1·000013 kilogrammes.

interests of science. This committee recommended the metric decimal system-a recommendation which has been endorsed by a committee of the House of Commons in the last session of Parliament.

British instrument-makers had been long conspicuous for accuracy of workmanship. Indeed, in the eighteenth century practical astronomy had been mainly in the hands of British observers; for although the mathematicians of France and other countries on the continent of Europe were occupying the foremost place in mathematical investigation, means of astronomical observation had been furnished almost exclusively by English artisans.

The sectors, quadrants, and circles of Ramsden, Bird, and Cary were inimitable by Continental workmen.

But the accuracy of the mathematical-instrument maker had not penetrated into the engineer's workshop. And the foundation of the British Association was coincident with a rapid development of mechanical appliances.

At that time a good workman had done well if the shaft he was turning, or the cylinder he was boring, was right to the end of an inch.' This was, in fact, a degree of accuracy as fine as the eye could usually distinguish.

Few mechanics had any distinct knowledge of the method to be pursued for obtaining accuracy; nor, indeed, had practical men sufficiently appreciated either the immense importance or the comparative facility of its acquisition.

The accuracy of workmanship essential to this development of mechanical progress required very precise measurements of length, to which reference could be easily made. No such standards were then available for the workshops. But a little before 1830 a young workman named Joseph Whitworth realised that the basis of accuracy in machinery was the making of a true plane. The idea occurred to him that this could only be secured by making three independent plane surfaces; if each of these would lift the other, they must be planes, and they must be true.

The true plane rendered possible a degree of accuracy beyond the wildest dreams of his contemporaries in the construction of the lathe and the planing machine, which are used in the manufacture of all tools.

His next step was to introduce an exact system of measurement, generally applicable in the workshop.

Whitworth felt that the eye was altogether inadequate to secure this, and appealed to the sense of touch for affording a means of comparison. If two plugs be made to fit into a round hole, they may differ in size by a quantity imperceptible to the eye, or to any ordinary process of measurement, but in fitting them into the hole the difference between the larger and the smaller is felt immediately by the greater ease with which the smaller one fits. In this way a child can tell which is the larger of two cylinders differing in thickness by no more thanth of an inch.

Standard gauges, consisting of hollow cylinders with plugs to fit, but