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him at once a painful and laborious search, and affording him at the same time an assurance that what is here offered contains the whole of the treasures yet acquired.

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

The British Association.

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safe and steady one ;-thus it comes forward with a helping hand in striving to remove these impediments which the unaided efforts of the individual labourer have been or may be unable to overcome.

This is the twenty-ninth anniversary of the foundation of this Association ;* and well may we look back with satisfaction to its operation and achievements throughout the time of its existence. When, on the 27th of September, 1831, the meeting of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society took place at York, in the theatre of the Yorkshire Museum, under the presidency of the late Earl Fitzwilliam, then Viscount Milton, and the Rev. W. Vernon Harcourt eloquently set forth the plan for the formation of a British Association for the Promotion of Science, which he showed to have become a want for his country, the most ardent supporter of this resolution could not have anticipated that it would start into life full-grown, as it were; enter at once upon its career of usefulness, and pursue it without deviation from the original design, triumphing over the oppositions 27th September, 1859.

which it had to encounter, in common with everything that is new and claims to be useful. This proved that the want was a real, and not an imaginary one, and that the mode in which it was intended to supply that want was based upon a just appreciation of unalterable truths.

LANDLORDS AND THEIR TENANTS.

THIS visit has brought me for the first time to the county of Lincoln, so celebrated for its agricultural pursuits, and showing a fine example of the energy of the national character, which has, by dint of perseverance, succeeded in transforming unhealthy swamps into the richest and most fertile soil in the kingdom. I could not have witnessed finer specimens of Lincolnshire farming, than have been shown to me on his estates by my noble host,† who has made me acquainted not only with the agricultural improvements which are going on amongst you, but with *To Great Grimsby, April 18, 1849. + The Earl of Yarborough.

Landlords and their Tenants.

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that most gratifying state of the relation between Landlord and Tenant which exists here, and which I hope may become an example, in time to be followed throughout the country. Here it is that the real advantage and the prosperity of both do not depend upon the written letter of agreements, but on that mutual trust and confidence which has in this country for a long time been held a sufficient security to both, to warrant the extensive outlay of capital, and the engagement in farming operations on the largest scale.

FEATURES OF ENGLISH CHARACTER.

*

THIS work has been undertaken, like almost all the national enterprises of this great country, by private exertion, with private capital, and at private risk; and it shares with them likewise that other feature so peculiar to the enterprises of Englishmen, that strongly attached as they are to the institutions of their country, and gratefully

* The Great Grimsby Docks.

acknowledging the protection of those laws under which their enterprises are undertaken and flourish, they love to connect them, in some manner, directly with the authority of the Crown, and the person of the Sovereign; and it is the appreciation of this circumstance which has impelled me at once to respond to your call, as the readiest mode of testifying to you how strongly Her Majesty the Queen values and reciprocates this feeling.

THE METHOD OF LORD BACON.

THE British Association embraces in its sphere of action, if not the whole range of the sciences, yet a very large and important section of them, those known as the inductive sciences, excluding all that are not approached by the inductive method of investigation. It has, for instance (and considering its peculiar organization and mode of action, perhaps not unwisely), eliminated from its consideration and discussions those which come under the description of moral and political sciences. This has not been done from undervaluing their

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