ADDRESS

BY

UNIVERSITY

RICHARD OWEN, M.D., V.P.R.S., D.C.L., F.L.S. ETC.,

SUPERINTENDENT OF THE NATURAL HISTORY DEPARTMENTS, BRITISH MUSEUM.

GENTLEMEN OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION,

We are here met, in this our 28th annual assembly, having accepted, for the present year, the invitation of the flourishing town and firm seat of British manufacturing energy, Leeds, to continue the aim of the Association, which is the promotion of Science, or the Knowledge of the Laws of Nature; whereby we acquire a dominion over Nature, and are able so to apply her powers as to advance the well-being of society and exalt the condition of mankind. It is no light matter, therefore, the work that we are here assembled to do.

God has given to man a capacity to discover and comprehend the laws by which His universe is governed; and man is impelled by a healthy and natural impulse to exercise the faculties by which that knowledge can be acquired. Agreeably with the relations which have been instituted between our finite faculties and the phenomena that affect them, we thus arrive at demonstrations and convictions which are the most certain that our present state of being can have or act upon.

Nor let any one, against whose prepossessions a scientific truth may jar, confound such demonstrations with the speculative philosophies condemned by the Apostle; or ascribe to arrogant intellect soaring to regions of forbidden mysteries the acquisition of such truths as have been or may be established by patient and inductive research. For the most part, the discoverer has been so placed by circumstances, rather than by predetermined selection, as to have his work of investigation allotted to him as his daily duty; in the fulfilment of which he is brought face to face with phenomena into which he must inquire, and the result of that inquiry he must faithfully impart. The course of natural as of moral truth is progressive: but it has pleased the Author of all truth to vary the fashion of the imparting of such parcels thereof as He has allotted from time to time, for the behoof and guidance of mankind.

Those who are privileged with the faculties of discovery are, therefore, to

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be regarded as preordained instruments in making known the power of God, without a knowledge of which, as well as of Scripture, we are told that we shall err.

Great and marvellous have been the manifestations of this power imparted to us of late times, not only in respect of the shape, motions, and solar relations of the earth, but also of its age and inhabitants.

In regard to the period during which the globe allotted to man has revolved in its orbit, present evidence strains the mind to grasp such sum of past time with an effort like that by which it tries to realize the space dividing that orbit from the fixed stars and remoter nebulæ. Yet, during all those æras that have passed since the Cambrian rocks were deposited which bear the impressed record of Creative power, as it was then manifested, we know, through the interpreters of these 'writings on stone,' that the earth was vivified by the sun's light and heat, was fertilized by refreshing showers, and washed by tidal waves.

No stagnation has been permitted to air or ocean. The vast body of waters not only moved, as a whole, in orderly oscillations, regulated, as now, by sun and moon; but were rippled and agitated by winds and storms. The atmosphere was healthily influenced by its horizontal currents; and by ever-varying clouds and vapours, rising, condensing, dissolving, and falling in endless vertical circulation. With these conditions of life, we know that life itself has been enjoyed throughout the same countless thousands of years; and that with life, from the beginning, there has been death.

The earliest testimony of the living thing, whether shell, crust, or coral in the oldest fossiliferous rock, is at the same time proof that it died.

At no period has the gift of life been monopolized by a few contemporary individuals through a stagnant sameness of untold time; but it has been handed over from generation to generation, and successively enjoyed by the myriads that constitute the species. And, herein, we discern the greater beneficence and wisdom; that, through death, whether sudden or preceded by a brief decay, the individual enjoys the varying phases of life,-healthy assimilative growth, active youth, and vigorous maturity, with the procreative faculties and instincts to boot. And as life rises in the scale, even to the present highest form, foreknowing of his end, death is still the condition on which are enjoyed man's purest pleasures, - the reverential love of parentsthe holy affections of wedlock-the fond yearning towards offspring.

It has further been given us to know, that not only the individual but the species perishes; that as death is balanced by generation, so extinction has been concomitant with creative power, which has continued to provide a succession of species; and furthermore, that, as regards the varying forms of life which this planet has witnessed, there has been "an advance and progress in the main."

Geology demonstrates that the Creative force has not deserted this earth during any of her epochs of time; and that in respect to no one class of animals has the manifestation of that force been limited to one epoch. Not a species of fish that now lives, but has come into being during a comparatively recent period: the existing species were preceded by other species, and these again by others still more different from the present. No existing genus of fishes can be traced back beyond a moiety of known creative time. Two entire orders have come into being, and have almost superseded two other orders since the newest of the secondary formations of the earth's crust.

The axiom of the continuous operation of Creative power, or of the ordained becoming of living things, is here illustrated by the class of fishes, because that class is exempt from the application of some exterminating causes affecting terrestrial and air-breathing animals.

But the creation of every class of such animals, whether Reptiles, Birds, or Beasts, has been successive and continuous, from the earliest times at which we have evidence of their existence. The reptiles of the coal measures, the great birds that impressed the Connecticut sandstones, and the marsupial mammals of the Stonesfield and Purbeck Oolites, came into being long before the Cycloid fishes were created and anterior to the apparition of any known existing species of aquatic animal. Species after species of land animals, order after order of air-breathing reptiles, have succeeded each other; creation ever compensating for extinction. The successive passing away of air-breathing species may have been as little due to exceptional violence, and as much to natural law, as in the case of marine plants and animals. It is true, indeed, that every part of the earth's surface has been submerged; but successively, and for long periods. Of the present dry land different natural continents have different faune and flore; and the fossil remains of the plants and animals of these continents respectively show that they possessed the same peculiar characters, or characteristic facies, during periods extending far beyond the utmost limits of human history.

Such, gentlemen, is a brief summary of facts most nearly interesting us, which have been demonstratively made known respecting our earth and its inhabitants. And when we reflect at how late and in how brief a period of historical time the acquisition of such knowledge has been permitted, we must feel that, vast as it seems, it may be but a very small part of the patrimony of truth destined for the possession of future generations.

The certain knowledge of the very shape of the earth dates not so far back by some centuries as that epoch marked by the revelation, amongst other divine truths, of the responsibility of man for the use of the talent entrusted to him; and we may well believe that it has been mainly under the sense of this responsibility that men have submitted themselves to that patient endurance of the labour of investigation, experiment, comparison, invention, and the pondering on results, often to the utmost reach of mental tension, by which the present knowledge of the Divine power has been acquired.

In reviewing the nature and results of our proceedings during the last twenty-seven years, and the aims and objects of our Association, it seems as if we are realizing the grand Philosophical Dream or Prefigurative Vision of Francis Bacon, which he has recounted in his 'New Atlantis.'

In this noble Parable the Father of Modern Science imagines an Institution which he calls "Solomon's House," and informs us, by the mouth of one of its members, that "the end of its Foundation is the Knowledge of Causes and Secret Motions of Things; and the enlarging of the bounds of Human Empire to the effecting of all things possible."

Amongst the means and instruments to this great end, Bacon imagines laboratories situated at the greatest attainable distances, vertically, in regard to the atmosphere ;-some sunk 600 fathoms deeper than the deepest natural cave; others placed on towers set upon high mountains, "so that the vantage of the hill with the tower is in the highest of them three miles at least." In the depths he conceives might be carried on the producing of new artificial metals by compositions and materials left at work for many years, in imitation of natural mines; also observations on the formation of figured fossils; and he speculates upon the influence of these cold depths in the curing of certain diseases and the prolonging of human life, as it seems by a superinduced torpidity. In the higher regions of the air are to be carried on observations of the heavens, and of divers meteors-wind, rain, hail, and falling stars.

"We have also," he writes, "spacious houses where we imitate and demonstrate meteors, as thunders, lightnings, snow, hail, and rain. We have, also, instruments which generate heat only by motion."

Next come arrangements for the appliance of water-power and of winds to set a-going divers motions :-" engine-houses, where are prepared engines and instruments for all sorts of motions, some swifter than any known to the rest of the world, and other various motions for equality, fineness and subtilty: -a mathematical house, where are represented all instruments, as well of geometry as astromomy, exquisitely made. We have also sound-houses, where we practise and demonstrate all sounds and their generation, as by divers instruments of music; and those that imitate all articulate sounds and letters, and the voices and notes of beasts and birds. We have also the means to convey sounds in trenches and pipes in strange lines and distances." Then come the perspective-houses, " where we make demonstrations of all light and radiations and of all colours; and out of things uncoloured and transparent we can represent unto you several colours, both as rainbows and as single. We make artificial rainbows, halos and circles about light, and represent all manner of reflexions, refractions, and multiplication of visual beams of objects. These multiplications of light we carry to great distances, and make so sharp as to discern small points and lines. We procure means of seeing objects afar off, as in the heaven and remote places, representing things afar off as near. We * Davy, Herschel, Aluminium.

have also glasses and means to see minute bodies perfectly and distinctly, as the shapes and colours of small flies and worms, which cannot otherwise be seen;" also "observations on blood and sap not otherwise to be seen."

In regard to natural history, Bacon imagines huge Aquaria, of both salt and fresh water, for the use and observation and generation of fish and fowl, "where we make trials upon fishes. We have also parks and enclosures of all sorts of beasts and birds, which we use not only for view and rareness, but likewise for dissections and trials; that thereby we may take light what may be wrought upon the body of man.

"We have also large and various orchards and gardens, wherein we do not so much respect beauty as variety of ground and soil: in these are practised all conclusions of grafting and inoculating; and we make, by art, trees and flowers to come up earlier or later than their seasons; we also make them by art much greater than their nature, and their fruit greater and sweeter, and of different taste, smell, and colour."

Lastly, as one important means of effecting the great aims of the "six dayscollege," certain of its members were deputed, as "merchants of light," to make "circuits or visits of divers principal cities of the kingdom."

This latter feature of the Baconian organisation is the chief characteristic of the "British Association; " but we have striven to carry out other aims of the 'New Atlantis,' such as the systematic summaries of the results of different branches of science, of which our published volumes of 'Reports' are evidence; and we have likewise realized, in some measure, the idea of the 'Mathematical House' in our establishment at Kew.

The national and private Observatories, the Royal and other Scientific Societies, the British Museum, the Zoological, Botanical, and Horticultural Gardens combine in our day to realize that which Bacon foresaw in distant perspective. Great beyond all anticipation have been the results of this organisation, and of the application of the inductive methods of interrogating Nature.

The universal law of gravitation, the circulation of the blood, the analogous course of the magnetic influence, which may be said to vivify the earth, permitting no atom of its most solid constituents to stagnate in total rest; the development and progress of Chemistry, Geology, Palæontology; the inventions and practical applications of gas, the steam-engine, photography, telegraphy :-such, in the few centuries since Bacon wrote, have been the rewards of the faithful followers of his rules of research.

We can hardly appreciate the swift of progress of human knowledge unless we go back, for an instant, to the period whice I have chosen as the startingpoint in this survey.

Bacon's treatment of the Copernican theory shows the importance of pure observation in the establishment of natural truth, and places in a strong light the incompetency of the highest intellectual power, of itself, to reason up to truth, even when it is so plain as it now appears to us in reference to the true nature of the apparent movements of the sun in respect to the earth. The well-known passages from the 'Thema Cæli,' and the essay 'On the