The Sun.
London, England, 1846-09-14 00:00:00

THE OXFORD GRADUATE ON PAIN riNG.

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T1-if FIRST VOLUME‘ OF MODERN
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THE SECOND VOLUME OF MODERN PAINTERS.
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THE PROP LE'S JOURNAL.
Part VIII., for SEPTEMBER, contahuq=--
ENGRAVINGS.

Haydon's Dentatus. .
r Joshua Reynold's Infant Hercules.
Portrait of Father Mathew, With Memoir, by W m Howitt.
Scott Memorial, Edinburgh.
Faust and Margaret, by Scheffer.
ORIGINAL PAPERS. 4... •
Harriet Martineau's Survey from the .Mounta' ;.*/ ;.
lain Holydays, and Household Education. .
The Katlrs of the Cape of Good Hope, b. G. . • '
Story of* Penny, by Mary Leman Gil*.s.
William Howitt on Flogging ; on Grey,. the Author of the Railway
Systefn ; and the Robber Band at Tusculum.
Mademoiselle Rachel, by Angus B. Reach.
The Birmingham Athenic Institute.
Life in New South Wales.
Ragged Schools of Liverpool.
Life of a Sailor, by Franklin Fox.
Music—Part Singing, by H, F. Chorley.
Democracy in Europe, by J. Mazzini ; No. 1.
Poems, Tales, Essays, &c., by 11. F. Chorley, R. H. Horne,Richard
Howitt, Mary Howitt, Thomas Campion, Caroline A. White, &c. &c.
In preparation. Portraits of and Papers on Lloyd, Garrison, Charles
Knight, W. C. Macready, W. J. Fox, &c.
London: People's Journal Office, 69, Fleet-street. Sold by all
Booksellers and Newsmen.

Moan-

BRITISH ASSOCIATION FUR THE

ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE.
SOUTHAMPTON, PRIAM—The first general meeting
of the association was held last night, and the expecta-
tion of Prince Albert's presence collected a very full
audience in the Victoria Rooms. The room selected for
the meeting will hold 600 or 700 persons, and was
crowded to excess; a number of ladies formed part of
the company. The apartment is a handsome one, and
the reason of its being below stairs is, that the house is
built upon the side of a hill; if there were an approach
at the back from the lower ground, the peculiarity would
disappear; but, as it is, it is a house with the door at
the top. Through the courtesy of Mr. Klitz,•the pro-
prietor, and master of the ceremonies for this occasion,
ample accommodation was provided for the representa-
tives of the press. At half-past eight o'clock his Royal
Highness arrived; he looked extremely well; he was in
plain evening dress, wearing a black coat and trousers,
and white waistcoot and neckerchief. He took his seat
on the platform on the right of the chair. Next to the
Prince were Lieutenant-Colonel Sabine (the General
Secretary); Viscount Palmerston, M.P.; the Marquis of
Northampton, the Bishop of Norwich, the Speaker of
the House of Commons, and the Mayor of Southampton.
It was said that the Bishop of Oxford was too unwell to
attend. The Marquis of Winchester, the Dean of West-
minster, Mr. Tite, and a whole host of scientific persons
were present.
The company rose to receive the Prince. His Royal
Highness having taken his seat, they sat down ; and
the chair was taken by
Sir J. F. W. HERSCHEL, Bart., the retiring President,
who congratulated the meeting on a presence which
gave a dignity and sanction to its proceedings such as
on no former occasion the society had received.—
(Cheers.) For the honour thus conferred they felt the
warmest emotions of grateful respect • it was a recogni
tiou of the glorious cause in which they were embarked
—a cause in which were involved the glory of England,
and the prosperity of every inhabitant of this country,
from the Queen upon her throne, God bless her—
(Cheers)—down to the lowest inhabitant of a cottage.
For himself, in returning on this occasion to a town as-

sociated with the reminiscences of his younger days, he
could not but see, as in every town in England, a great
change, a start forward into civic and commercial ac-
tivity, which would make it, as of old, a link of commu-
nication between England and her distant colonies—one
of the poles of that electric circuit with which Great
Britain must animate and might convulse the world.
The itinerant character of the association brought it the
more in contact with that great phenomenon—the im-
mensity of our national progress, the intense activity
pervading everything in England at this moment, with
the fact that it was every year more and more placed
under the guidance of that science which it was the
society's office to promote and to diffuse. Believing
firmly that the resources of science were inexhaust-
ible, and that its scope extended to ameliora-
tions of every description, he could look forward to
the future, not only without gloom and foreboding, but
with the temperate exultation which Providence per-
mitted to such as desired no aggrandisement but that
which was in unison with its own grand and beneficent
designs. With regard to his own year of presidency, he
would just remind the audience that that year had given
them the discovery of a new planet, and the prospect of
another; they saw it as Columbus saw America, from
the shores of Sp.min. In the subdivision of a member of
our system, we had also beheld one of the recognised
ingredients of that system separated into two, each pur
suing an independent orbit round the sun. After passing
a high eulognim upon the new President, Sir John then
resigned the chair to
Sir R. J. MURCHISON, who immediately afterwards
rose and said,—Gentlemen of the British Association,
deeply conscious as I. am of my inferiority to my emi
nent predecessor in the chair of the British Association
in all that respects the higher branches of physical
science, I still hope that my ardent devotion to your
cause rom your very cradle, from your very institution,
may plead in my favour, and may be held by you as
some guarantee for the zealous execution of my office.
Give me leave to assure you that I consider being
placed in this position as a mark of approbation on your
part, which is to me the highest honour that could have
been confered upon me through life,—an honour the
more cherished because it has been confered upon me
in a county with which I have long been connected by
family ties, and in which I made my first essay as a geo-
logist. —(Cheers.) Those feelings are strongly enhanced
when I look around, and see that this association has
for the first time been honoured with the presence of
royalty.—(Loud cheers.) You cannot conceive the gra-
tification it gives me, when. I know that his Royal High-
ness, the consort of our beloved Sovereign—(Cheers)--
comes fresh from the mines of Cornwall, and has been
making himself so good a geologist, that, in addition
to all those other numerous branches of science with
which his Royal Highness is already acquainted, we
shall see him here attending our sections in a few days ;
for we know him to be—what I now inform his Royal
Highness of—the one and only honorary member of the
British Association for the Advancement of Science.—

—(Loud cheers, during which his Royal Highness
bowed his acknowledgments to the President.) But,
when gentlemen trust to memory they are very discur-
sive, and on these occasions it is necessary to keep pre-
cisely to the point, and therefore I must now trouble
you with my sermon—(A laugh)—l must put on my
spectacles—(Laughter)—and read to you a discourse,
which I have prepared with as much care as is in my
power.
The PRESIDENT then proceeded to read his inaugural
addres.. After observing that the origin, progress, and
many of the objects of this their " Parliament of
sufficientlys branches of science. The
dwell explainedon
recent
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eda various
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discourse was of great length, and will hardly admit of
abridgment; one or two of the most interesting portions
of it will convey an idea of its nature. Sir Roderick
said, " A request from the association to Professor
Bunsen, of Alarburg, and our countryman, Dr. Lyon
Playfair, coupled with a contribution of small amount
towards the expenses involved in the undertaking, has
produced:a report on the conditions and products of iron
furnaces, which is of the greatest value in a commercial
view to one of the most important of our manufactures,
and possesses, at the same time, a very high interest to
chymical science in some of the views which it developes.
On the one hand, it exhibits an entirely new theory of
y
the reduction, by cyanogen gas as the chief agent, of
iron from the ore; on the other, it shows that, in ad-
dition to a vast saving of fuel. about 2cwt. of sal am-
moniactctee at the single establish-
ment experiments were made;
thus leading us to infer that in the iron furnaces
of Britain there may he obtained from vapour
e
which now passes away an enormous quantity
ent of mAalyf re to daily
, b
where collected
of this valuable substance, which would materially
lessen the dependence of our agriculturists on foreign
guano. It is, indeed, most gratifying to observe,
that in pursuing this inquiry into the gaseous contents
of a blazing furnace of great height, our associates
traced out, foot by foot, the most recondite chymical
processes, and described the fiery products with the
same accuracy as if their researches had been made on
the table of a laboratory. * '' * * * •
" When our associate Conybeare reported to us, at our
second meeting, onthe actual state and ulterior prospects
of what he well termed the archaeology of the globe,'
he dwelt with justice on the numerous researches in
different countries which had clearly established the his-
tory of a descent, as it were, into the bowels of the earth
—which led us, in a word, downwards through those
newer deposits that connect high antiquity with our
own period, into those strata which support our great

" Res alts terra et caligine mersas.'
Now, however, we have dispersed this gloom, and by
researches first carried out to a distinct classification in
the British Isles, and thence extended to Russia and
America, geologists have shown that the records of suc-
cession, as indicated by the entombment of fossil ani
mals, are as well developed in these very ancient or
palmezoic strata as in any of the overlying or more
recently formed deposits. After toiling many years
in this department of the science, in conjunction
with Sedgwick, Lonsdale, De Verneuil, Keyserlince
and others of my fellow-labourers, I have arrived
at the conclusion that we have reached the very
genesis of animal life upon the globe, and
that no further vestigia retrorsum' will be found
beneath that protozoic or lower Silurian group
in the great inferior mass of which no vertebrated ani-
mal has yet been detected amid the countless profusion
of the lower order of marine animals entombed in it.
But, however this may be, it is certain that, in the last
few years, all Central and Eastern Europe, and even
parts of Siberia, have been brought into accordance with
British strata, whilst our kinsmen of the Far West
hare so ably developed the structure of their respective
states, that our countryman, Lyell, has informed us
that the excellent map which accompanies his work
upon North America is simply the grouping together of
data prepared by native state geologists, which he has
paralleled with our well-known British types. If, then,
the astronomer has, to a vast extent, expounded the me-
chanism of the heavens; if lately, through the great
telescope of our associate the Earl of Rosse, he has as-
signed a fixity and order to bodies which were previously
viewed as mere nebulae floating in space, and has also
inferred that the surface cavities in our nearest neigh-
bour of the planetary system are analogous to the vol-
canic apertures and depressions of the earth; the geolo-
gist, contributing data of another order to the great
storehouse of natural knowledge, has determined by ab-
solute and tangible proofs, the precise manner in which
our planet has been successively enveloped in divers
cerements, each teeming with peculiar forms of distinct
life, and has marked the revolutions which have inter-
fered with there successive creations, from the earliest
dawn of living, things to the limit of the historic era.
In short, the fundamental steps gained in geology
since the early days of the British Association are so re-
markable and so numerous that the time has now come
for a second report upon the progress of this science,
which may, I trust, be prepared for an approaching, if
not for the next meetings' * * *
" When M. Quetelet remarks, that the phases of the
smallest insect are bound up with the phases of the plant
that nourishes it ; that plant itself being in its gradual
development the product, in some sort, of all anterior
modifications of the soil and atmosphere,' he compels
the admission that the study which should embrace all
periodical phenomena, both diurnal and annual, would of
itself form a science as extended as instructive. Re-
ferring you to M. Quetelet's report for an explanation
of the dependence of the vegetable and animal kingdom
on the meteorology and physics of the globe, and hoping
that the simultaneous observations he inculcates will be
followed up in Britain, I am glad to be able to announce
that the outline of a memoir on physical geography was
some months ago put into my hands by Mr. Cooley,
which, in a great degree coinciding with the system of
M. Quetelet, has ultimately a very different object. M.
Quetelet chiefly aims at investigating the dependence
of organized bodies on inorganized matter, by, observing
the periodical phenomena of the former. Mr. Cooley
seeks to obtain an acquaintance with the same pheno-
mena for the sake of learning and registering compara-
tive climate as an element of scientific agriculture.
Speaking to you in a county which is so mainly depen-
dent on the produce of the soil, I cannot have a more
favourable opportunity for inculcating the value of the
suggestions of this British geographer. The complete
establishment of all the data of physical geography
throughout the British Islands ; i.e. the registration of
the mean and extremes of the temperature of the air and
of the earth ; the amount of conduction, radiation, mois-
ture, and magnetism ; the succession of various phases
of vegetation, &c. (with their several local corrections
for elevation and aspect), must certainly prove conducive
to the interests of science, and are likely to promote
some material interests of our country."
The oration concluded with a complimentary welcome
of the foreign visitors, and Sir Roderick sat down amidst
great applause.
Lord PALMERSTON then rose, and said—Although,
gentlemen, upon the present occasion, there are assem-
bled in this room a great number of persons eminent for
their attainments in science, yet there are also many
who, like myself, are only humble admirers of the at-
tainments of others, professing to possess no knowledge
themselves of the matters in which those distinguished
individuals have attained their eminence. I trust it will
not be deemed presumption on my part, if, being one of this,
perhaps the most numerous part of those here assembled, I
venture to propose to you that we return our thanks to
our distinguished President of this day, for the admir-
able discourse with which he. has explained to us the
objects of tho meeting.—(Cheers.) It would be pre-
sumption indeed in me, gentlemen, if I were to endea-
vour to point out particularly to your attention the
many claims which our worthy President has established
to the gratitude and to the admiration of his fellow-
countrymen. It would be impossible for anybody more
adequately to point out to you those claims than he
has himself just d me, by a discourse which shows that,
however eminent he is in that particular department
of knowledge to which he has more particularly
directed his attention, he is equally versed in all
those departments of intellect and science in
which mankind have excelled ; that he has directed
his attention to the progress which other scientific
men have made, and that he is as capable of ex-
plaining to you the results of the researches of others, as
of himself contributing a valuable addition to the stock
of human knowledge.--(Hear, hear.) It must be gra-
tifying indeed to us that the present meeting of this as-
sociation should be presided over by so competent a
ehief ; and, however important may be the many other
ranges of science over which he has cast his rapid, glance
yet there surely can be none more interesting than that
particular department in which he has so successfully
laboured—that department by which he and others have
been enabled to interrogate our mother earth, to extort
from her the knowledge of what had passed in ages long
gone by, and to read in the traces which still remain of

former periods the history of antecedent hundreds and
thousands of years.—(Hear, hear.) Gentlemen, it is im-
possible to estimate too highly the importance of those
pursuits in honour of which, and in the prosecution of
which, this meeting is here assembled ; and it is diffi-
cult to estimate their value, so also it is almost impos-
sible for us to fix a limit to the progress which the
human mind may be destined to make. Each successive
step which mankind has made in the departments of
science has rendered simple that which was wonderful
before ; has added to our stock of knowledge facts
which, before they were ascertained, would have ap-
peared to be impossible, but which, when ascertained,
have not only contributed greatly to the con-
venience, advantage, and interests of the exist-
ing generation, but have laid the foundation for
future progress in similar investigations and discoveries.
Why, gentlemen, if any man in the earlier ages of
the world had told those timid mariners who went creep-
ing about from cape to cape, and from bay to bay, halt.
ing at night, and never losing sight of the land, that an
invention would be made by which, in the dead and
darkness of the night, men might traverse the trackless
ocean, directing their unerring course to the distant
regions to which they were bound, would he not have
been treated as a man indulging in the most chimerical
imaginations ? And yet that great invention is now so
identified with the practice and the memory of man, that
if you were to ask many of those who are in the daily
habit of using it they would hardly believe there was a
period when the knowledge and practice of it had not
been enjoyed by men of their profession.—(Hear, hear.)
If, in the earlier periods of war, men had been told that
a time would come when the lightning and the thunder-
bolt of heaven would be placed in the hands of armies
for the purposes for which they were assembled, they
would have thought that the people who told them so
were trifling with their credulity. And what would
have been said in the earlier ages of Europe, if they had
been told that means would be discovered by which the
results of the learning and the thoughts of man would
be recorded with a precision and a rapidity which, to
them, would have seemed impossible; and that even the
discussions of such a meeting as this would, before the
dawn of the next morning, be travelling upon the
wings of the wind to every portion and every corner
of an extended empire ?—(Cheers.) Why, gentle-
men, we ourselves can remember the time when the
greater part of mankind would have scouted the notion
that you could infuse into a vessel an impelling force
which would defy the baffling of adverse winds and the
contending influence of adverse currents, and would
enable the mariner to reach the most distant portions of
the globe in defiance of the winds and the waves ; and
yet this great discovery has in our days been applied
extensively to the use cf mankind, not only upon the
ocean, but even upon the land, and is now become a fa
miliar instrument to the minds of the most unlearned.
But, gentlemen, what would Warren Hastings, and
what would the great Clive have said, if, when they
were founding in the East that vast and magnificent
empire which now owns its connexion and subjection to
English rule, they had been told that, in a few passing
years after they had established that great dominion, an
invention would be made which should render it
physically possible, if it were politically arranged, that
a Minister in the House of Commons, interrogated upon
a question connected with India, might say to his inter-
rogating opponent, " Have the goodness, sir, to repeat
your question at the end of half-an-hour, and in the in-
terval I will obtain an answer from the Governor-
General at Calcutta ?"—(Laughter and cheers.) Yet
that, I apprehend, is physically possible, by the late
discoveries of some of the distinguished men of science
of our clay.--(Cheers.) What would have been said
by those men who first began with rude instruments
to examine the resplendent heavens, if they had been
told that a time would come when a great astro-
nomical instrument would be constructed by which
mankind should obtain a knowledge of the existence of
celestial bodies, whose light, it has been calculated by
astronomers, could not reach the small speck of earth
which we inhabit, in which the investigator dwells, in a
shorter period than 30,000,000 of years ? Why:Gen-
tlemen, these contemplations almost overwhelm the
powers of human imagination to conceive ; and yet