9 AUGUST 1856, Page 2

-Troutorial.

The British Association opened its twenty-sixth annual meeting on Wednesday, at Cheltenham. `This town is in many respect well fitted for the gathering. There are many public buildings, affording spacious class-rooms. The migratorypopulation are 'on their travels, and thus lodgings are comparatively cheap. All the available public buildings have been placed at the service of the Local Committee ; including the Proprietary College, the Grammar School, Pittville and Montpelier Pumprooms„ the Literary Institution and Messrs. Hale's Music Saloon. Dr. Wright formed a -Museum of Geology in the lecture-room of the Royal Institution. Business, on Wednesday, 'was opened by a meeting of the Council, followed by a meeting of the General Committee. Here Dr. Daubeny, the new President, took the chair. General Sabine read the report of the Parliamentary Committee. 'The' two chief points of public interest in this document were a reference to Mr. Heywood's motion on science in the House of Commons, and the nomination of two new Committeemen. With regard to Mn Heywood's motion, the report says

" The discussion of our report by the Committee of Recommendations at Glasgow in September last, the result of the debate which took place in the House of Commons on the occasion last referred to, and subsequent emumunicationa with members of the Legislature, have combined to convince us —let, That men of science have as yet formed no definite opinion on the

• important question raised in the report ; and, 2dly, that until such a result be attained, it is improbable that any important improvement will be effected in the position of science or its cultivators, either through the agency of the Government or Parliament. It is deisuable that some measure should be adopted which may be instrumental in inducing scientific men generally to apply their minds to the consideration of these questions, and to agree upon some definite proposals. We therefore recommend that the subject should be again brought before the Committee of Recommendations."

The new members of the Committee are Lord Stanley and the Earl of Burlington, instead of Earl Cathcart and Sir J. V. B. Johnstone, absent for two consecutive years.

In the evening, the members gathered in the great hall of the College, to hear the inaugural discourse on the progress of science. The Duke of Argyll first took the chair, in order to resign it formally to his successor. Dr. Daubeny reviewed the progress of Physical Science during the last twenty years. Beginning with chemistry, which he largely treated, he passed on to botany and vegetable physiology, and thence to geology and geography. He seemed to regar& the future of chemistry as almost boundless " lfany perhaps of my present audience may not have advanced beyond that initial stage of all speculation which contemplates external objects solely as they affect themselves, and not abstractedly in their relations to each other ; and to such it may be more interesting to consider those practical results bearing upon the arts of life, which have either been actually deduced, or may be anticipated as likely to accrue, from the discoveries in question. Of these, perhaps the most important is the possibility of forming by art those compounds which had been formerly supposed to be only producible by natural processes under the influence of the vital principle. The last two years have added materially to the catalogue of such bodies artificially produced; as in the formation of several species of alcohol from coal-gas by Berthelot, that of oil of mustard by the same chemist, and the generation of t,aurine, a principle elaborated in the liver' by Strecker. And if the above discoveries isho strike you at first sight rather as curious than practically useful, I would remark that they afford reasonable ground for hope that the production of some of those principles of high medicinal or economical value, which Nature has sparingly provided, or at least limited to certain districts or climates, may lie within the compass et the chemist's skill. If quinine, for instance, to which the Peruvian bark owes its efficacy, be, as would appear from recent researches a• modified condition of ammonia, why may not a Haman be able to produce it for us from its elements, ashe has already done so many other alkaloids of similar constitution ? And thus, whilst the progress of civilization and the development of the chemical arts are accelerating the consumption of those articles which kind Nature has either been storing up for the use of man during a vast succession of antecedent ages, or else is at present elaborating for us in that limited area within which alone the conditions would seem to be such as to admit of their production we are encouraged to hope that science may make good the loss she has contributed to create, by herself inventing artificial modes of obtaining these necessary materials. In this case, we need not so much regard the exhaustion of our collieries, although Nature appears to have provided no means for replenishing them ; nor even be concerned at the rapid destruction of the trees which yield the Peruvian bark, limited though they be to a very narrow zone, and to a certain definite elevation on either side of the Equator. Already, indeed, chemistry has given token of her powers, by threatening to alter the course of commerce, and to reverse the tide of human industry. Thus she has discovered, it is said, a substitute for the cochineal insect, in a beautiful dye producible from guano. She has shown that our supply of animal food might be obtained at a cheaper rate from the Antipodes, by simply. boiling down the juices of the flesh of cattle now wasted and thrown aside in those countries, and importing the extract in a state of concentration. She has pointed out, that one of the earths which constitute the principal material of our globe contains a metal as light as glass, as malleable and ductile as copper, and as little liable to rust as silver ; thus possessing properties so valuable, that when means have been found of separating it economically from its ore, it will be capable of superseding the metals in common use, and thus of rendering metallurgy an employment, not of certain districts only, but of every part of the earth to which science and civilization have penetrated."

With respect to manures, here is a suggestive passage " In eo far, indeed, as concerns the relative advantages of mineral and ammoniacal manures, I presume there is little room for controversy ; for although most soils may contain a sufficiency of the inorganic constituents required by the crop, it by no means follows that the latter are always in an available condition; and hence it may well happen, that in most cases in which land has been long under cultivation, the former class of manures become, as Baron Liebig asserts, a matter of paramount necessity. Now, , that the same necessity exists for the addition of ammoniacal manures can • hardly be contended, when we reflect that, at the first commencement of vegetable life, every existing species of plant must have obtained its nourishment solely from the gaseous constituents of the atmosphere, and from the mineral contents of the rock in which it vegetated. The only divergence of opinion, therefore that can arise relates to the degree of their respective utility in the existing state of our agriculture, and to the soundness of Baron Liebig's position, that a plant rooted in a soil well-charged with all the requisite numeral ingredients, and in all other respects in a condition calculated to allow of healthy vegetation, may sooner or later be able to draw from the atmosphere whatever else is required for its full development. And dues not, I would ask, this latter position derive some support from the luxuriant vegetation of the Tropics where art certainly contributes nothing towards the result ? and is it not also favoured by such experiments as those carried on at Lois Weedon in Northamptonshire, where the most luxuriant wheat crops have been obteined for a number of consecutive years without manures of any kind, simply by following out the Tullian system of stirring up and pulverizing the soil."

On the change that public feeling has undergone in reference to the Association

" Twenty years ago, it was thought necessary to explain at our meetings the character and objects of this Association,. and to vindicate it from the denunciations fulminated. against it by individuals, and even by parties of men, who held it up as dangerous to religion and subversive of sound principles in theology. Now, so marked is the change in public feeling, that we are solicited by the clergy, no less than by the laity, to hold our meetings within their precincts, and have never received a heartier welcome • than in the city in which we are now assembled, which values itself so especially, and with such good reason, on the extent and excellence of its educational establishments Although it can hardly be expected that the great schools in the country will assign to the natural sciences any important place in their systems of instruction, until the Universities, for which they are the seminaries, set them the example, yet I cannot doubt but that, the signal once given, both masters and scholars will eagerly embrace a change so congenial to the tastes of youth,. and so favourable to the development of their intellectual faculties All, therefore, that seems wanted, now that local preferences seem on the point of being removed, is, on the one hand, a more equal distribution of the existing emoluments between the several professions ; and, on the other, the admission of the claims of the sciences received into our educatinnal system to share in the emoluments which up to this time have been m

lized by the classics. And, as it is far from my wish to curtail th= studies of the University of their proper share of support—for who that has passed through a course of academical study can be insensible of the advantage& he has derived from that early discipline of the mind which flows front their cultivation ?—I rejoice to think, that when the Legislature shall have completed the removal of those restrictions which have hitherto prevented us in many instances from consulting the claims of merit in the distribution of our emoluments, there will be ample means afforded for giving all needful encouragement to the newly-recognized studies without trenching unduly upon that amount of pecuniary aid which has been hitherto accorded to the classics. In anticipation of which change, I look forward with confidence to the day when the requirements at Oxford, in the department of physind science, will become so general and so pressing, that no institution which professes to prepare the youth it instructs for academical competition will venture to risk its reputation by declining to admit these branches of study into its educational courses."

The business in the sections commenced on Thursday morning, and promised abundant and interesting matter for the followers of science. The name of the "Section of Statistics" was changed at the genera/ meeting to the Section of "Economic Science and Statistics," at the suggestion of Mr. Monckton Mines. In opening the proceedings of this section, Lord Stanley, its chairman, delivered an address on the enlarged scope of its duties under the new title, discoursed on the general laws of statistics and their uses, and made a practical suggestion.

"Statistics," he said, "are the function of the state in a sense in which no other science is so." And to illustrate our wants on that head, he re. ferred to the Agricultural Statistics Bill, and Lord Brougham's measure on judicial statistics. "it is not wise in any country to copy servilely the practices of another; local differences may create and necessitate diversity of procedure ; but I may refer to the annual reports (two yearly volumes) of the Minister of Justice in France as a sample of an almost perfect arrangement of complicated statistical details. One result of that publication is to show a vast local difference between department and department in the nature and amount of crime. It is that when such a difference is shown by the lapse of a sufficient period to be chronic . and not merely casual, the Government whose attention is thus invited must feel itself bound to investigate the source of the evil, and, if possible, to provide a cure. In fact, an Executive regularly supplied with such knowledge may be said to have its finger on the pulse of every province ready at the first symptom of disease to intervene with requisite uisite remedy. here s another suggestion which I may make, and which indeed connects itself with this last : I allude to the advantage—I might almost say the necessity—of establishing a Statistical Department of Government, charged with the annual publication of such facts relative to the management of national affairs as are reducible to numerical expression. We have statistics enough presented to Parliament every seamen, but they are in the great majority of cases called for by individuals. They are drawn out to suit the 'particular purpose of those who move for them : they are accordingly deficient in unity„ and often of no use beyond the moment. Now I speak from some personal observation when I say, that at a cost hardly greater than that of these desultory fragmentary isolated returns, (which have in addition the inconvenience,. coming as they do at unexpected times, and without any regularity, of throwing a sudden increase of work on particular officers,) it would be possible to present to the nation such a yearly résumé of administrative statiaticsaa should to a very great degree supersede the present system—if system it can be called—of moving for returns as and when they are wanted."