The Sun.
London, England, 1865-09-07 00:00:00

BIRMINGHAM, Sept. 6.
The woceedings in connexion with this meeting of
the Association commenced to-day. The President
arrived in town this morning, and is the guest of
the mayor at Metchley Grange.
A meeting of the general committees was held at 1
o'clock at the Midland Institute, Sir Chas. Lyell in
the chair. Among thosepresent were Sir R. Murchi-
son, Sir H. Rawliuson, Lord Stanley, Sir J. Bowring,
Mr. Crawfurd, Professor Phillips, Dr. Lee, Mr. J.
P. Gassiott, Sir E. Belcher, Dr. Hunt, &c.
A great deal of routine business, such as the read-
ing
of financial and other reports, and the appoint-
ment of vice-presidents and secretaries of sections,
was transacted. The receipts of the association for
the past year £3,831, and the expenditure leaves an
available balance ofs£7s9 in the hands of the treasurer.
After the formal proceedings concluded, a length-
ened discussion took place on the motion of Dr.
Hunt, and seconded by Sir E. Belcher, to the effect
that a separate section be formed, entitled H, to be
devoted solely to the subject of Anthropology.
Sir RODERICK MURCHISON strongly opposed the
proposition, on the ground that a further multiplica-
tion of the sections would render the association un-
workable. Similar claims might be put in on behalf
of the votaries of other special branches of science,
and at present there were few towns that could pro-
vide accommodation even for their present number
of simultaneous meetings. He recommended the An-
thropologists to follow the precedent of the Royal
Agricultural Society and found a separate association
for the cultivation of their favourite science.
Dr. Hunt's motion was ultimately negatived, as
were also two others having a similar object.
The first general meeting was held in the Town-
hall this evening. The doors were opened at 7 o'clock,
and the spacious building was speedily filled. Pro-
fessor Phillips entered the hall accompanied by the
mayor and other gentlemen, at a few minutes before
8, and was well received.
The PRESIDENT immediately rose and delivered
an inaugural address, of which the following
is a summary :—Assembled for the third time
in this busy centre of industrious England,
amid the roar of engines and the clang of hammers,
where the strongest powers of nature are trained to
work in the fairy chains of art, how softly falls upon
the ear the accent of science, the friend of that art,
and the guide of that industry Here, where Priestly
analysed the air, and Watt obtained the mastery
over steam, it well became the student of nature to
gather round the standard which they carried so far
into the fields of knowledge. And when, on other
occasions, we meet in quiet colleges and academic
halls, how gladly welcome is the union of fresh dis-
coveries and new inventions with the solid and vener-
able truths which are there treasured and taught !
Long may such union last—the fair alliance of
cultivated thought and practical skill ; for by it
labour is dignified and science fertilised, and the
condition of human society exalted. Through this
happy union of science and art, the young life of
the British Association—one-third of a century—
has been illustrated by discoveries and enriched by
useful inventions in a degree never surpassed. Life
in every form, of every grade, in every stage ; man
in every clime and under all conditions ; the life
that now surrounds us, and that which has passed
away, these subjects of high contemplation have
been examined often, if not always in the spirit of
that philosophy which is slowly raising, on a broad
security of observed facts, sure inductions, and re-
peated experiments, the steady columns of the temple
of physical truth. Few great branches of the study of
of nature on which modern philosophy is intent
were left unconsidered in the schools of Athens ;
hardly one of them was, or, indeed, could be made
the subject of accurate experiment. The precious
instruments of exact research— the measures of
time, and space, and force, and motion—are of
very modern date. having proceeded at some
length to refer to the astronomical discoveries of
modern times, he observed :—To our country-
men, in particular, belongs the honour of suc-
cessful experiments on. the rose-coloured flames
which extend from certain points of the sun's border
during an eclipse, as well as of valuable contribu-
tions through the same agency to that enlarged
survey of the physical aspect of the moon which,
since 1832, the association has striven to promote.
By another application of the same beautiful art, in
connexion with clockwork, the momentary changes
of magnetic force and direction, the variations of
temperature, the firittuat ions of a t mosph eric pressure,
the force of the wind, the fall of rain, the proportion
of ozone in the air are registered in our observatories,
and thus the inventions of Ronalds and his successors
have engaged the solar rays in measuring and com-
paring contemporaneous phenomena of the same
order over large parts of the globe--phenomena some
of which are occasioned by those very rays. As we
ascend above the earth, heat, moisture, and mag-
netic force decrease, the velocity of wind augments,
and the proportion of oxygen and nitrogen remains
the same. The decrease of heat as we rise into the
air is no new subject of inquiry, nor have the views
respecting it been very limited or very accordant.
Leslie considered it mathematically in relation to
pressure ; Humboldt gave the result of a large in-
quiry at points on the earth's surface unequally ele-
vated above the sea : and finally, Mr. Glaisher and
Mr. Coxwell, during many balloon ascents to the
zones of life-destroying cold, far above our mountain
tops, have obtained innumerable data, in all seasons
of the year, through a vast range of vertical height.
The result is to show much more rapid decrease near
the earth, much slower decrease at great elevations;
thus agreeing in general with the view of Leslie, and
yet throwing no discredit on the determinations of
Humboldt, which do not refer to the free atmo-
spherid ocean, but to the
_mere borders of it where it
touches the earth and is influenced thereby. Re-
searches of every kind have so enriched meteorology
since our early friend, Professor J. Forbes, printed
his suggestive reports on that subject, and so great
have been the benefits conferred on it by the electric
telegraph, that at this moment, in M. Leverrier's
observatory at Paris, and the office solately presided
over by Admiral Fitzroy in London, the messages
are arriving from all parts of Europe to declare
the present weather, and furnish grounds for
reasonable expectation of the next probable
change. Hardly now within the seas of-Europe can
a cyclone begin its career of devastation before the
warning signal is raised in our sea-ports, to restrain
the too confident sailor. The gentle spirit which
_employed this knowledge in the cause of humanity
has Passed away, leaving an example of unselfish
devotion in a work which must not fail through any
lack of energy on the part of this Association the
,
Royal Society, or the
Government. We must
extend these researches and enlarge these benefits
by the aid of the telegraph brin •
ironodf
world together. Soon may thatgltnig the ends of the
of commu-
nication unite the two great sections
the Anglo-
Saxon race, and bring and return through the
broad Atlantic the happy and mutual congratulations
for peace restored and friendship renewed, After
some observations on crystals the President pro-
ceeded :—The greater our progress in the study of
the economy of nature the more she unveils herself
as one vast whole ; one comprehensive plan ; One
universal rule, in a yet unexhausted series of
individual peculiarities. Such is the aspect of this
moving, working, living system of force and law ;
such it has ever been, if we rightly interpret the
history of our own portion of this rich inheritance
of mind, the history of that earth from which we
spring, with which so many of our thoughts are
co=ordinated, andto which all but our thoughts and
hopes will again return. How should we prize this
history ! and exult in the thought that in our own
days, within our ()Am memories, the very founda-
tions of the series of strata, deposited in the begin-
ning of time, have been explored by our living
friends, our Murchison and Sedgwick, while
the higher and more complicated parts of the
structure have been minutely examined by our
Lyell, Forbes, and Prestwich. How instructive the
history of that long series of inhabitants which re-
ceived in primeval times the gift of life, and filled
the land, sea, and air with rejoicing myriads,
through innumerable revolutions of the planet,
before in the fulness of time it pleased the Giver
of all good to place man upon the earth
and bid him look up to heaven. Wave suc-
ceeding "wave, the forms of ancient life

sweep across the ever-changing surface of the earth,
revealing to us the height of the land, the depth of
the sea, the quality of the air, the course of the
rivers, the extent of the forest, the system of life
and death—yes, the growth, decay, and death of
individuals, the beginning and ending of races, of
many successive races of plants and animals, in
seas now dried, on sand-banks now raised into
mountains, on continents now sunk beneath the
waters. Had that series a beginning ? Was the
earth ever uninhabited, after it became a globe
turning on its axis and revolving round the sun ?
Was there ever a period since land and sea were
separated--a period which we can trace—when the
land was not shaded by plants, the ocean not alive
with animals ? The answer, as it comes to us from
the latest observation, declares that in the lowest
deposits of the most ancient seas in the stratified
crust of the globe, the monuments of life remain.
They extend to the earliest sediments of water, now
in part so changed as to appear like the products of
fire. What life ? Only the simpler and less specially
organised fabrics have as yet rewarded research
among these old Laurentian rocks—only the aggre-
gated structures of foraminifera have been found in
what, for the present at least, must be accepted as
the first deposits of the oldest sea. The most ancient
of all known fossils, the Eozoon Canadense of Sir
W. Logan, is of this low, we may say lowest, type
of animal organisation. Then step by step we are
guided through the old Cambrian and Silurian sys-
tems rich in trilobites and brachiopoda, the delights
of Salter and Davidson ; with Agassiz and Miller
and Egerton we read the history of the strange old
fished of the Devonian rocks ; Brongniart and Gop-
pert and Dawson and Binney and Hooker unveil
the mystery of the mighty forests now converted to
coal ; Mantell and Owen and Huxley restore for us
the giant reptiles of the Has, the oolite, and the
wealden ; Edwards and Wright almost revive the
beauteous corals and echinodermata; which with all
the preceding tribes have come and gone before the
dawn of the later periods, when fragments of mam-
moths and hippopotami were buried in caves and
river sediments to reward the researches of Cuvier
and Buckland, Prestwich and Christy, Lartet and
Falconer. And what is the latest term in this long
series of successive existence ? Surely the monu-
ments of ever advancing art—the temples whose
origin is in caverns of the rocks ; the cities which
hive taken the place of holes in the ground, or heaps
of stones and timber in a lake ; the ships which have
outgrown the canoe, as that was modelled from the
floating trunk of a tree, are sufficient proof of the
late arrival of man upon the earth, after it had un-
dergone many changes and had become adapted to
his physical, intellectual, and moral nature. Com-
pared with the periods which elapsed in the accom-
plishment of these changes, how short is the date of
those yet standing monoliths, cromlechs, and circles
of unhewn stone which are the oldest of human
structures raised in Western Europe, or of those
more regular fabrics which attest the early impor-
tance of the monarchs and people of Egypt, Assy-
ria, and some parts of America. Yet tried by monu-
ments of natural events which happened within the
age of man, the human family is old enough in
Western Europe to have been sheltered by caverns
in the rocks, while herds of reindeer roamed in
Southern France, and bears and hyaenas were deni-
zens of the South of England. More than this, re-
mains of the rudest human art ever seen are cer-
tainly found buried with and are thought to belong
to races who lived contemporaneously with the
mammoth and rhinoceros, and experienced the cold
of a Gallic or British winter, from which the woolly
covering of the wild animals was a fitting protec-
tion. Our own annals begin with the Felts, if,
indeed, we are entitled to call by that historic name
the really two separate nations—Belgian, Iberian,
and Teutonic—whom the Roman writers re-
cognise as settlers in Britain, settlers among a
really earlier family, our rudest and oldest
forefathers, who may have been, as they thought
themselves to be, the primitive people of the land.
But beyond the KEXrai, who occupied the sources
of the Danube and the slopes of the Pyrenees, and
were known to Rome in later days, there was pre-
sent to the mind of the father of Grecian his-
tory a still more western race, the Cyneffe,
who may, perhaps, be supposed the very
earliest people of the extreme west of the
continent of Europe. Were those the people,
the first poor pilgrims from the East, whose foot-
steps we are slowly tracing in the valleys of Picardy
and the south of England, if not on the borders of
the lakes of Switzerland ? Are their kindred st;'

to be found among the Rhmtic Alps and the Astu-
rian cliffs, if not amid the wilds of Connemara,
pressed into those mountainous recesses by the
legions of Rome, the spear of the Visigoth, and the
sword of the Saxon ? Or must we regard them as
races of an earlier type, who had ceased to chip
flints before the arrival of Saxon or Goth, or Kelt
or Cynetian? These questions of romantic interest
in the study of the distribution and languages of the
families of man are part of a large circle of inquiry
which finds sympathy in several of our sections,
especially those devoted to zoology, physiology, and
ethnology. Let us not expect or desire for them a
very quick, or, at present, a very definite settle-
ment. Deep shadows have gathered over all the
earlier ages of mankind, which, perhaps, still longer
periods of time may not avail to remove. Yet let
us not undervalue the progress of ethnological in-
quiry, nor fail to mark how, within the period to
which our recollections cling, the revelations of
early Egypt have been followed by a chronology
of the ancient kingdoms on the Tigris and Euphrates
through the same rigorous study of language. Thus
has our Rawlinson added another page to the bril-
liant discoveries of Young and Champollion, Lepsius
and Rosellini. Nor, though obtained in a different
way, must we forget the new knowledge of a people
nearer home, which .the philosophic mind of Keller
has opened to us among his native mountains.
There, on the borders of the Alpine lakes, before
the great Roman General crossed the Rhone, lived
a people older than the Helvetians, whose rude
lives, passed in hunting and fishing, were neverthe-
less marked by many of the inventions which every-
where, even in the most unfavourable situations,
accompany
,the least civilised of mankind. Im-
plements of stone and pottery of the rudest sort

belong to _ the earliest of these people ; while

ornamented weapons of war, and innumerable

...
other fabrics in that metal, appear about the
later habitations, and correspond probably to the
period of the true Helvetii, who quitted their
home and contended with Cesar for richer settle-
ments in Gaul. The people of whom these are the
traces on almost every lake in Switzerland are re-
cognised as well as in the ancient lake basins of
Lombardy and among the Tyrolean Alps, and
farther on the north side of the mountains ; and
probably fresh discoveries may connect them with
the country of the Sarmatians and the Scythians.
Thus at length is fairly opened, for archaeology and
palaeontology to read, a new chapter of the world's
history, which begins in the Pleistocene periods of
geology and reaches to the pre-historic ages of man.
Did our ancestors really contend, as the poets
fancied, with stones and clubs against the lion and
the rhinoceros, and thus expel them from their
native haunts, or have they been removed by change
of climate or local physical conditions ? Was the
existence of the hyena
Europeand the element only pos-
siblewiAle a climate prevailed
in Western
there such as now belon
was this period of high tem
later time for the elk, reindeer, and
~.s to Africa or India? And
,
perature reduced in a
musk ox which
undoubtedly roamed over the hills of Ent-land and
France ? If we think so, what a vista of long dura-
tion stretches before us, for no such Changes of
climate can be supposed to have occurred except as
the effect of great physical changes, requiring a
lapse of many thousands of years ! And, though

we may think such changes of climate not proved,

and probably careful weighing of evidence may jus-
tify our disbelief, still, if the valleys in Picardy have
been excavated since the deposit of the gravel of St.
Acheul, and the whole face of the country has been

altered about the caverns of Torquay since they
received remains of animals and traces of man—

how can we admit these facts and yet refuse the
time required for their accomplishment ? First, let
119 be sure of the facts, and especially of that main
fact upon which all the argument involving im-
mensity of time really turns—viz., the contempo-
raneous existence of man with the mammoth of