FROM NOVEMBER 23, 1855, TO NOVEMBER 15, 1856. LONDON: PUBLISHED FOR THE SOCIETY BY GEORGE BELL, 186, FLEET STREET. 1856. Society has held forth, how many have turned Journal of the Society of Arts. their attention to some special department of art FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1855. FIRST ORDINARY MEETING. The First Ordinary Meeting of the One or manufacture. Our prize list from year to year has given a stimulus to the inventive faculties of our members, and has been the means of turning their ideas into that particular groove of thought which at length has led to the discovery of some process, or to the invention of some machine, that has conferred, or may be destined to confer, the greatest benefits on our manufacturing industry. The Rev. Dr. Booth, as Chairman of Council, afford a wholesome stimulus and relaxation. The then read the following ADDRESS. In another respect, too, societies such as ours are eminently useful. Men engaged in the dull steady routine of daily employment, run no small danger that their intellects may be blunted, and finally corroded with the rust of long disuse; for such men societies, whether literary or scientific, instances are by no means rare in which we find those who are engaged during the day in the busy turmoil of commercial pursuits, devoting In accordance with the custom, sanctioned with untiring ardour and commensurate success by long prescription, which requires that the their leisure hours to scientific investigations. Chairman of the Council of your Society, should, Nor is it at all strange that this should be the in the words of one of our rules, "read an ad-case; for to an active mind, engaged during the dress at the opening of the Session declaratory of greater portion of the day in occupations which the course the Council propose to follow in the exercise only a particular class of the mental faforthcoming Session," I now venture to address culties, it is no irksome task, but rather a relaxto you a few observations on the present occasion, ation-an unbending of the bow, so to speakand I promise to be as brief as the variety and to employ it in pursuits which bring into play extent of the subjects I shall have to touch upon other faculties and other operations of the inwill permit me to be. You will bear with me tellect. Let no one be discouraged by the while I assert the utility, and advocate the claims groundless notion that the fields of man's dison public support, of Societies such as ours. We covery in Nature's wide domains are already assemble here, we meet in social converse for the reaped and garnered, or that at the most but a friendly interchange of thought, and it may be- few gleanings now remain to reward the patience no doubt it has often happened-that a notion of the most diligent inquirer. It is not so; the suggested, or a casual hint thrown out, may, by fertility of Nature is inexhaustible; one discovery the operation of the laws of association, connect but gives the clue to a series of others. And if itself with some latent train of ideas, perhaps long it be a just assumption, as I have no doubt it is, forgotten, but now kindled as by a spark into a that the secrets of Nature are actually infinite, blaze of light, and thus lead to a series of re- the more we discover the greater the facility that searches and discoveries which may only be the will attend the process of discovery; for the rebrightening of the horizon before the full bril-lations that bind the phenomena of Nature toliancy of some grand discovery shall burst upon the gether, and which are the very elements of man's view. Again, induced by the generous encour-knowledge, increase in a far higher proportion agement and the judicious rewards which, from than the phenomena themselves. It is, indeed, the earliest period of its associated life, our more in accordance with that adaptation of means |