Extracts from Resolutions of the General Committee.

Committees and individuals, to whom grants of money for scientific purposes have been entrusted, are required to present to each following meeting of the Association a Report of the progress which has been made; with a statement of the sums which have been expended, and the balance which remains disposable on each grant.

Grants of pecuniary aid for scientific purposes from the funds of the Association expire at the ensuing meeting, unless it shall appear by a Report that the Recommendations have been acted on, or a continuation of them be ordered by the General Committee.

In each Committee, the Member first named is the person entitled to call on the Treasurer, John Taylor, Esq., 2 Duke Street, Adelphi, London, for such portion of the sum granted as may from time to time be required.

In grants of money to Committees, the Association does not contemplate the payment of personal expenses to the Members.

In all cases where additional grants of money are made for the continua tion of Researches at the cost of the Association, the sum named shall be deemed to include, as a part of the amount, the specified balance which may remain unpaid on the former grant for the same object.

On Thursday evening, September 10th, at 8 P.M., in the Victoria Rooms, Southampton, the late President, Sir John F. W. Herschel, Bart., F.R.S., resigned his office to Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, G.C.St.S., F.R.S., who took the Chair at the General Meeting, and delivered an Address, for which see p. xxvii.

On Friday evening, September 11th, in the same room, Professor Owen, F.R.S., delivered a Discourse on the Fossil Mammalia of the British Islands. On Monday evening, in the same room, Charles Lyell, Esq., F.R.S., delivered a Discourse on the Valley and Delta of the Mississippi, and other points in the Geology of the United States, from observations made in the years 1845-46.

On Tuesday evening, in the same room, W. R. Grove, Esq. explained the properties of the Explosive Substance recently discovered by Dr. Schönbein; and communicated some recent researches of his own, on the Decomposition of Water into its constituent Gases by Heat.

On Wednesday evening, at 8 P.M., in the same room, the Concluding General Meeting of the Association was held, when the Proceedings of the General Committee, and the grants of money for scientific purposes, were explained to the Members.

The Meeting was adjourned to Oxford, on the 24th of June, 1847.

SIR RODERICK IMPEY MURCHISON, G.C.ST.S., F.R.S., V.P.G.S.

&c. &c.

GENTLEMEN,—After fifteen years of migration to various important cities and towns in the United Kingdom, you are for the first time assembled in the South-Eastern districts of England, at the solicitation of the authorities and inhabitants of Southampton. Easily accessible on all sides to the cultivators of science, this beautiful and flourishing sea-port is situated in a tract so adorned by nature, and so full of objects for scientific contemplation, that, supported as we are by new friends in England, and by old friends from distant parts of Europe, we shall indeed be wanting to ourselves, if our proceedings on this occasion should not support the high character which the British Association has hitherto maintained.

For my own part, though deeply conscious of my inferiority to my eminent predecessor in the higher branches of science, I still venture to hope, that the devotion I have manifested to this Association from its origin to the present day, may be viewed by you as a guarantee for the zealous execution of my duties. Permit me then, Gentlemen, to offer you my warmest acknowledgements for having placed me in this enviable position; and to assure you, that I value the approbation which it implies as the highest honour which could have been bestowed on me-an honour the more esteemed from its being conferred in a county endeared to me by family connexions, and in which I rejoice to have made my first essay as a geologist.

The origin, progress and objects of this our "Parliament of Science " have been so thoroughly explained on former occasions by your successive Presidents, particularly in reference to that portion of our body which cultivates the mathematical, chemical and mechanical sciences, that after briefly alluding to some of the chief results of bygone years, with a view of impressing upon our new members the general advances we have made, I shall in this address dwell more particularly on the recent progress and present state of natural history, the department of knowledge with which my own pursuits have been most connected, whilst I shall also incidentally advert to some of the proceedings which are likely to occupy our attention during this Meeting. No sooner, Gentlemen, had this Association fully established its character as a legitimate representative of the science of the United Kingdom, and by its published Reports, the researches which it instituted, and the other substantial services which it rendered to science, had secured public respect, than it proceeded towards the fulfilment of the last of the great objects which a Brewster and a Harcourt contemplated at its foundation, by inviting the attention of the Government to important national points of scientific interest. At the fourth Meeting held in Edinburgh, the Association memorialized the Government to increase the forces of the Ordnance Geographical Survey of Britain, and to extend speedily to Scotland the benefits which had been already applied by that admirable establishment to the South of England, Wales and Ireland. From that time to the present it has not scrupled to call

the notice of the Ministers of the day to every great scientific measure which seemed, after due consideration, likely to promote the interests or raise the character of the British nation. Guided in the choice of these applications by a committee selected from among its members, it has sedulously avoided the presentation of any request which did not rest on a rational basis, and our rulers, far from resisting such appeals, have uniformly and cordially acquiesced in them. Thus it was when, after paying large sums from our own funds for the reduction of masses of astronomical observations, we represented to the Government the necessity of enabling the Astronomer Royal to perform the same work on the observations of his predecessors which had accumulated in the archives of Greenwich, our appeal was answered by arrangements for completing so important a public object at the public expense. Thus it was, when contemplating the vast accession to pure science as well as to useful maritime knowledge, to be gained by the exploration of the South Polar regions, that we gave the first impulse to the project of the great Antarctic expedition, which, supported by the influence of the Royal Society and its noble President, obtained the full assent of the Government, and led to results which, through the merits of Sir James Ross and his companions, have shed a bright lustre on our country, by copious additions to geography and natural history, and by affording numerous data for the development of the laws that regulate the magnetism of the earth.

The mention of terrestrial magnetism brings with it a crowd of recollections honourable to the British Association, from the perspicuous manner in which every portion of fresh knowledge on this important subject has been stored up in our volumes, with a view to generalization, by Colonel Sabine and others; whilst a wide field for its diffusion and combination has been secured by the congress held at our last meeting, at which some of the most distinguished foreign and British magneticians were assembled under the presidency of Sir John Herschel.

It is indeed most satisfactory for us to know, that not only did all the recommendations of the Association on this subject which were presented to our Government meet with a most favourable reception, but that in consequence of the representations made by Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to the public authorities of other countries which had previously taken part in the system of cooperative observation, the Governments of Russia, Austria, Prussia and Belgium have notified their intention of continuing their respective magnetical and meteorological observations for another term of three years.

In passing by other instances in which public liberality has been directed to channels of knowledge which required opening out, I must not omit to notice the grant obtained from our gracious Sovereign, of the Royal Observatory at Kew, which, previously dismantled of its astronomical instruments, has, under the suggestions of Professor Wheatstone, been converted by us into a station for observations purely physical, and especially for those details of atmospheric phænomena which are so minute and numerous, and require such unremitting attention, that they imperiously call for separate establishments. In realizing this principle, we can now refer British and foreign philosophers to our own observatory at Kew, where I have the authority of most adequate judges for saying they will find that a great amount of electrical and meteorological observation has been made, and a systematic inquiry into the intricate subject of atmospheric electricity carried out by Mr. Ronalds, to which no higher praise can be given, than that it has, in fact, furnished the model of the processes conducted at the Royal