The opening meeting of the British Association, held this year
at Glasgow, took place on Wednesday, the address being delivered by the President, Professor Rucker. The address, though not exciting or sensational, is admitted by the best judges to have been of peculiar weight and moment, for a went to the root of science. It was a plea for examinineselne of the hypotheses on which modern science has been built up: and for inquiring whether the foundations have been well and truly laid. Such examination is essential, for unless it were constantly taking place science would beeomelike scholasticism
_
a game at logic in which the premises mattered little or nothing, and the correct construction of syllogisms was the thingheld to be vital. Accordingly Professor Rucker
owy desires as it were to tap "the three chief conceptions which
(:er so many years have dominated physical science "—the abelic theory, the theory of the mechanical nature of heat, and the theory of the existence of ether—and to see if they ring true and show no flaw.
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