Sir John Lubbock's review, at York, on Wednesday, of the
progress of physical science during the last fifty years, was one of the most remarkable and interesting which any President of the British Association has delivered for many years. The jubilee of the foundation of the Association was a very fitting occasion for such a review, and Sir John Lubbock's very catholic interest in all branches of science made him just the man to make it effective. There is no dryness in Sir John Lubbock's address. He seizes on the picturesque side of all the phenomena he describes, aud links intellectual marvel to intel- lectual marvel, till the chain becomes one of almost inconceiv- able grandeur. In biology, in the evidence of the prehistoric ages of man, in the history of climatic changes, in geology, in the study of the physical geography of the earth, in astronomy and the wonderful story of the spectroscope, in optics, in the rapid development of electric science, in the explanation of the colouring of the ether and the clouds, and in the story of the correlation of the various physical forces, he followed the history of fifty years' discovery with just enough minuteness to give it interest, and enough generalisation and rapidity to warn us of its wonderful rate of progress.
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