While this has been one of its latest attempts, the Association has from its very beginning kept in view that its main sphere of usefulness lay in that concentrated attention to all scientific operations which a general gives to the movements of his army, watching and regulating the progress of his impetuous soldiers in the different directions to which their ardour may have led them, carefully noting the gaps which may arise from their independent and eccentric action, and attentively observing what impediments may have stopped, or may threaten to stop, the progress of certain columns.
Thus it attempts to fix and record the position and progress of the different labours, by its Reports on the state of Sciences published annually in its Transactions;—thus it directs the attention of the labourers to those gaps which require to be filled up, if the progress is to be a safe and steady one;—thus it comes forward with a helping hand in striving to remove those impediments which the unaided efforts of the individual labourer have been or may be unable to overcome.
Let us follow the activity of the Association in these three different directions.
The Reports on the state of Science originate in the conviction of the necessity for fixing, at given intervals, with accuracy and completeness, the position at which it has arrived. For this object the General Committee of the Association intrusts to distinguished individuals in the different branches of Science the charge of becoming, as it were, the biographers of the period. There are special points in different Sciences in which it sometimes appears desirable to the different Sections to have special Reports elaborated; in such cases the General Committee, in its capacity of the representative assembly of all the Sciences, reserves to itself the right of judging what may be of sufficient importance to be thus recorded.
The special subjects which the Association points out for investigation, in order to supply the gaps which it may have observed, are—either such as the philosopher alone can successfully investigate, because they require the close attention of a practised observer, and a thorough knowledge of the particular subject; or they are such as require the greatest possible number of facts to be obtained. Here Science often stands in need of the assistance of the general public, and gratefully accepts any contributions offered, provided the facts be accurately observed. In either case the Association points out what is to be observed, and how it is to be observed.
The first is the result of the same careful sifting process which the Association employs in directing the issue of special Reports. The investigations are intrusted to specially-appointed committees, or selected individuals. They are in most cases not unattended with considerable expense, and the Association, not content with merely suggesting and directing, furnishes by special grants the pecuniary means for defraying the outlay caused by the nature and extent of the inquiry. If we consider that the income of the Association is solely derived from the contributions of its members, the fact that no less a sum than 17,000l. has, since its commencement, been thus granted for scientific purposes, is certainly most gratifying.
The question how to observe, resolves itself into two—that of the scientific method which is to be employed in approaching a problem or in making an observation, and that of the philosophical instruments used in the observation or experiment. The Association brings to bear the combined knowledge and experience of the scientific men, not only of this but of other countries, on the discovery of that method which, while it economizes time and labour, promises the most accurate results. The method to which, after careful examination, the palm has been awarded, is then placed at the free disposal and use of all scientific investigators. The Association also issues, where practicable, printed forms, merely requiring the different heads to be filled up, which, by their uniformity, become an important means for assisting the subsequent reduction of the observations for the abstraction of the laws which they may indicate.
At the same time most searching tests and inquiries are constantly carried on in the Observatory at Kew, given to the Association by Her Majesty, the object of which is practically to test the relative value of different methods and instruments, and to guide the constantly progressive improvements in the construction of the latter.
The establishment at Kew has undertaken the further important service of verifying and correcting to a fixed standard the instruments of any maker, to enable observations made with them to be reduced to the same numerical expression. I need hardly remind the inhabitants of Aberdeen that the Association, in one of the first years of its existence, undertook the comparative measurement of the Aberdeen standard scale with that of Greenwich,—a research ably carried out by the late Mr. Baily.
The impediments to the general progress of Science, the removal of which I have indicated as one of the tasks which the Association has set for itself, are of various kinds. If they were only such as direction, advice, and encouragement would enable the individual, or even combined efforts of philosophers, to overcome, the exertions of the Association which I have just alluded to might be sufficient for the purpose. But they are often such as can only be successfully dealt with by the powerful arm of the State or the long purse of the nation. These impediments may be caused either by the social condition of the country itself, by restrictions arising out of peculiar laws, by the political separation of different countries, or by the magnitude of the undertakings being out of all proportion to the means and power of single individuals, of the Association, or even the voluntary efforts of the public. In these cases, the Association, together with its sister society, “The Royal Society,” becomes the spokesman of Science with the Crown, the Government, or Parliament—sometimes even, through the Home Government, with foreign Governments. Thus it obtained the establishment, by the British Government, of magnetic and meteorological observatories in six different parts of the globe, as the beginning of a network of stations which we must hope will be so far extended as to compass by their geographical distribution the whole of the phenomena which throw light on this important point in our tellurian and even cosmical existence. The Institute of France, at the recommendation of M. Arago, whose loss the scientific world must long deplore, cheerfully co-operated with our Council on this occasion. It was our Association which, in conjunction with the Royal Society, suggested the Antarctic Expedition, with a view to further the discovery of the laws of terrestrial magnetism, and thus led to the discovery of the southern polar continent. It urged on the Admiralty the prosecution of the tidal observations, which that department has since fully carried out. It recommended the establishment, in the British Museum, of the conchological collection exhibiting present and extinct species, which has now become an object of the greatest interest.