2 JULY 1932, Page 16

AMBULATORY SCIENTIFICS.

Our readers may not be generally acquainted with the fact, that there has been established a moveable Metropolis of Science. Last year this capital invention was exhibited at York, and this year at Oxford. Last week, "there assembled in the latter city, crowds of sevens from every part of England ; who, during the short space of a few days, discussed a very considerable portion of the Animal Kingdom, with much apparent satisfaction to themselves, and greatly to the relief of the graziers and breeders of that county. This locomotive institution is called the "British Association for the Promotion of Science." It is calculated by Mr. BARRAGE, in his Economy of Manufactures, that scientific men are apt to live on too slender a diet, and unless roused once a year, sink into a dingy state of repose, unfavourable to the progress of the sciences. In order to " produce that excitement favourable to the development of ideas," it has been resolved that all the savans of England shall meet once a year in some rich grazing country, and feed together an entire and glorious week. Lest the appetite- should pall, and the best use not be made of a short time, professors are appointed to exercise the troops in the open air, on a new and scientific plan. Dr. Buck-IA.14n, for instance, this year, mounted all the savans, and the demi-savans (not those of the French army in Egypt, who used to call their donkeys by that name), on horseback, and galloped over the hills and through a geological lecture at the rate of twenty miles an hour.