The meeting of the British AssoCiation at Belfast has been
a fairly successful one. Many valuable papers were read, though there was no one, if we except Professor H. E. Armstrong's on technical education, of universal interest. There was a certain want, too, of what we may call " illuminating " papers, those which leave on the minds of the half-instructed a just impression that their knowledge and their opinions have been made at once wider and more definite. There has been a recoil of late years from such papers as too " popular," ending in a supply of lectures so technical that though they may inform those engrossed by their subjects, they are to the world—which the Association, it must be remembered, pro- fesses to address—simply. unintelligible. The managers of the Association lave, of .course, many difficulties to contend with, every man who will contribute a paper worth hearing fighting for his independence ; but a little more editing of a general kind . would, we think, increase the utility of the Aasociation without interfering too much with any idiosyn- crasy. We have given up the old word " mystery," formerly considered necessary to describe any art or science, and the change marks at least a change in the general wish.
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