Report of the Annual Meeting

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Page xiii - To give a stronger impulse and a more systematic direction to scientific inquiry, — to promote the intercourse of those who cultivate Science in different parts of the British Empire, with one another, and with foreign philosophers, — to obtain a more general attention to the objects of Science, and a removal of any disadvantages of a public kind which impede its progress.
Page lxvii - Dr. Hooker, in his address to the British Association, spoke thus of the author: " Of Mr. Wallace and his many contributions to philosophical biology it is not easy to speak without enthusiasm ; for, putting aside their great merits, he, throughout his writings, with a modesty as rare as I believe it to be unconscious, forgets his own unquestioned claim to the honour of having originated, independently of Mr. Darwin, the theories which he so ably defends.
Page 514 - On both sides of the zone here assigned to the materialist he is equally helpless. If you ask him whence is this "Matter" of which we have been discoursing, who or what divided it into molecules, who or what impressed upon them this necessity of running into organic forms, he has no answer. Science is mute in reply to these questions.
Page 512 - Forces are active at the root, forces are active in the blade, the matter of the earth and the matter of the atmosphere are drawn towards both, and the plant augments in size.
Page 511 - Let us pass from this illustration of constructive power to another of a different kind. When a solution of common salt is slowly evaporated, the water which holds the salt in solution disappears, but the salt itself remains behind. At a certain stage of concentration the salt can no longer retain the liquid form; its particles, or molecules, as they are called, begin to deposit themselves as minute solids, so minute, indeed, as to defy all microscopic power. As evaporation continues solidification...
Page xv - RECOMMENDATIONS. The General Committee shall appoint at each Meeting a Committee, which shall receive and consider the Recommendations of the .Sectional Committees, and report to the General Committee the measures which they would advise to be adopted for the advancement of Science.
Page 513 - They appear together, but we do not know why. Were our minds and senses so expanded, strengthened, and illuminated as to enable us to see and feel the very molecules of the brain ; were we capable of following all their motions, all their groupings, all their electric discharges, if such there be ; and were we intimately acquainted with the corresponding states of thought and feeling, we should be as far as ever from the solution of the problem, " How are these physical processes connected with the...
Page 514 - In affirming that the growth of the body is mechanical, and that thought, as exercised by us, has its correlative in the physics of the brain, I think the position of the .' Materialist' is stated, as far as that position is a tenable > one. I think the materialist will be able finally to maintain this position against all attacks; but I do not think, in the present condition of the human mind, that he can pass beyond this position.
Page 217 - Report on the Animal and Vegetable Products imported into Liverpool from the year 1851 to 1855 (inclusive) ; — Andrew Henderson, Report on the Statistics of Life-boats and Fishing-boats on the Coasts of the United Kingdom. Together with the Transactions of the Sections, Rev.
Page 140 - These two spectra represent two distinct sources of light. Each spectrum is formed by the decomposition of light which is independent of the light which gives birth to the other spectrum. The continuous spectrum, crowded with groups of dark lines, shows that there exists a photosphere of incandescent solid or liquid matter. Further, that there is an atmosphere of cooler vapours, which give rise by absorption to the groups of dark lines.

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