Extracts from Resolutions of the General Committee.

Committees and individuals, to whom grants of money have been entrusted by the Association for the prosecution of particular researches in Science, are required to present to each following Meeting of the Association a Report of the progress which has been made; and the Individual or the Member first named of a Committee to whom a money grant has been made, must (previously to the next meeting of the Association) forward to the General Secretaries or Treasurer a statement of the sums which have been expended, and the balance which remains disposable on each grant.

Grants of money sanctioned at any one meeting of the Association expire a week before the opening of the ensuing Meeting; nor is the Treasurer authorized, after that date, to allow any claims on account of such grants, unless they be renewed in the original or a modified form by the General Committee.

No Committee shall raise money in the name or under the auspices of the British Association without special permission from the General Committee to do so; and no money so raised shall be expended except in accordance with the rules of the Association.

In each Committee, the Member first named is the only person entitled to call on the Treasurer, W. Spottiswoode, Esq., 50 Grosvenor Place, London, S.W., for such portion of the sums 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 continuation of Researches at the cost of the Association, the sum named is deemed

to include, as a part of the amount, whatever balance may remain unpaid on the former grant for the same object.

All Instruments, Papers, Drawings, and other property of the Association are to be deposited at the Office of the Association, 22 Albemarle Street, Piccadilly, London, W., when not employed in carrying on scientific inquiries for the Association.

General Meetings.

On Wednesday Evening, September 14, at 8 P.M., in the Philharmonic Hall, Professor G. G. Stokes, D.C.L., F.R.S., President, resigned the office of President to Professor T. H. Huxley, LL.D., F.R.S., F.L.S., &c., who took the Chair, and delivered an Address, for which see page lxxiii.

On Thursday Evening, September 15, at 8 P.M., a Soirée took place in the Free Public Library and Museum.

On Friday Evening, September 16, at 8.30 P.M., in the Philharmonic Hall, Prof. Tyndall, LL.D., F.R.S., delivered a Discourse on "The Scientific Use of the Imagination."

On Saturday Evening, September 17, in the Music Hall, Lord Nelson Street, Sir John Lubbock, Bart., M.P., F.R.S., delivered a Discourse on Savages" to the Operative Classes of Liverpool.

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On Monday Evening, September 19, at 8.30 P.M., in the Philharmonic Hall, Professor W. J. Macquorn Rankine, LL.D., F.R.S., delivered a Discourse on "Stream-lines and Waves in connexion with Naval Architecture." On Tuesday evening, September 20, at 8 P.M., a Soirée took place in the St. George's Hall.

On Wednesday, September 21, at 2.30 P.M., the concluding General Meeting took place, when the Proceedings of the General Committee, and the Grants of Money for Scientific purposes, were explained to the Members. The Meeting was then adjourned to Edinburgh*.

*The Meeting is appointed to take place on Wednesday, August 2, 1871.

ADDRESS

OF

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY, LL.D., F.R.S.,

PRESIDENT.

MY LORD3, LADIES, AND GENTLEMEN,

Ir has long been the custom for the newly installed President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science to take advantage of the elevation of the position in which the suffrages of his colleagues had, for the time, placed him, and, casting his eyes around the horizon of the scientific world, to report to them what could be seen from his watch-tower; in what directions the multitudinous divisions of the noble army of the improvers of natural knowledge were marching; what important strongholds of the great enemy of us all, Ignorance, had been recently captured; and, also, with duo impartiality, to mark where the advanced posts of science had been driven in, or a long-continued siege had made no progress.

I propose to endeavour to follow this ancient precedent, in a manner suited to the limitations of my knowledge and of my capacity. I shall not presume to attempt a panoramic survey of the world of Science, nor even to give a sketch of what is doing in the one great province of Biology, with some portions of which my ordinary occupations render me familiar. But I shall endeavour to put before you the history of the rise and progress of a single biological doctrine; and I shall try to give some notion of the fruits, both intellectual and practical, which we owe, directly or indirectly, to the working out, by seven generations of patient and laborious investigators, of the thought which arose, more than two centuries ago, in the mind of a sagacious and observant Italian naturalist.

It is a matter of every day experience that it is difficult to prevent many articles of food from becoming covered with mould; that fruit, sound enough to all appearance, often contains grubs at the core; that meat, left to itself in the air, is apt to putrefy and swarm with maggots. Even ordinary water, if allowed to stand in an open vessel, sooner or later becomes turbid and full of living matter.

The philosophers of antiquity, interrogated as to the cause of these phenomena, were provided with a ready and a plausible answer. It did not enter their minds even to doubt that these low forms of life were generated in the matters in which they made their appearance. Lucretius, who had drunk deeper of the scientific spirit than any poet of ancient or modern times ex1870.

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