From The Athenæum. DR. HOOKER'S INAUGURAL ADDRESS BE- THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. Ar the annual meeting at Norwich, on 19 August, the Duke of Buccleuch surrendered the sceptre of the British Association to his successor, Dr. Joseph D. Hooker,* who rose, and delivered the following address: THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. Phillips, upon whose presence here I congratulate both you and him. Again, looking back beyond thirty years ago, in the pages of your records I find those to have been halcyon years for Presidents, when the preparation and delivery of the Addresses devolved upon the treasurer, secretary, or other officers than the President; and that, in fact, Presidential Addresses date from the first meeting after that at Newcastle. Of late years these addresses have been regarded, if not as the whole duty of the President, certainly as his highest. For your sakes, as well as for my own, I wish this were not so, both because there are among your officers so many men far more gust, 1838. On that occasion the Council competent than I am, and because I believe of the Association resolved to recommend that the responsibility which the preparato Her Majesty's Government the despatch tion of these Addresses entails limits disadof an expedition to the Antarctic regions, vantageously your choice of Presidents. My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen, Thirty years will to-morrow have elapsed since I first attended a meeting of the British Association; it was the one which opened at Newcastle on the 20th of Au The impression is very prevalent that the Address should either be a scientific tour de force, philosophical and popular, or a résumé of the progress of one or more important branches of science; and this view of the duty has greatly embarrassed me, inasmuch as I am unable to fulfil either of these requirements. under the command of Capt. James Ross; and it was from Newcastle that I wrote to my friends announcing my resolve to accompany it in whatever capacity I could obtain a situation among its officers. It was thus that my scientific career was first shaped; and it is to this expedition, which was one of the very earliest results of the labours of the British Association, that I am indebted for the honour you have conferred upon me in placing me in your Pres- my botanical friends that I should either ident's chair. If I now look back with discuss the phenomena of the vegetable pride to those immediately following years when I had a share, however small, in the discovery of the Antarctic Continent, the Southern Magnetic Poles, the Polar Barrier, and the ice-clad volcanoes of Victoria Land, I do so also with other and far different feelings. Thirty years, as statisticians tell us, represent the average duration of a human life; I need not say, as measured by the On various occasions during the last halfyear I have essayed to fulfil the wishes of kingdom in their relation to collateral sciences, or sketch the rise and progress of scientific botany during the present century, or a portion of it; but every such essay has been quickly frustrated by the pressure of official duties. Such themes require much research, much thought, and, above all, some continuous leisure, during which the whole mind may be concentrated on the method of treatment, as well as on the ma records of this British Association, a human terial to be treated of; and this leisure was lifetime is far shorter than this; for of the fourteen officers who presided over us in 1838 but two remain - your former President and devoted adherent for thirty-five years, Sir Roderick Murchison, who delivered the opening address on that occasion, and whose health, I regret to add, prevents his attendance at this meeting, and your faithful and ever-green Secretary, Prof. * [Dr. Hooker is Director of the Royal Gardens at Kew.] incompatible with the discharge of my duties as administrator of a large public department, entailing a ceaseless correspondence with the Government offices and with botanical establishments all over the globe. And I do not ask your indulgence for myself alone, for there are at this meeting official men of scientific attainments, who have accepted the presidentship of Sections, but who, on leaving their posts to do your bidding, drag a lengthening chain of corthy, and their meetings will receive all the support, that my fellow members of the British Association can afford to them; and there is one way in particular by which we can show our goodwill and give our support, - and it is so simple that I hope no one will neglect it, - and that is, that we shall all call at their official residence at the Free Library, inscribe our names in their books, and obtain cards for their meetings. respondence after them, and sacrifice no methods, they will command all the sympashort portion of those brief holidays which are allowed to public officers. After all, it is deeds, not words, that we want from them; and I am proud to find our Sections presided over by men who have won their spurs in their respective sciences, and who will wear them in the chairs they occupy, and use them too if needs must. For my own part, I propose to offer some remarks upon several matters to which the attention of your Council was directed when at Dundee, and then upon some of the great advances that have been made in Botany during the last few years - this will infallibly drag me into Darwinism; after which I shall allude to some matters connected with The next subject which I have to bring officially before you will interest the members of the Congress no less than ourselves, and relates to the action of a committee which your Council appointed to represent to the Secretary of State for India "the that dawning science, the earlier history of great and urgent importance of adopting mankind, a theme which will be a distin-active measures to obtain reports on the. guishing collateral feature of the Norwich physical form, manners and customs of the Association. If in all this I disappoint you, indigenous populations of India, and esit will be my solace to hope that I may pecially of those tribes which are still in the thereby break the fall of some future Presi- habit of erecting megalithic monuments." Upon consideration, the Committee decided that it would be better, in the first instance, to direct the attention of the Secretary of State to the last-mentioned tribes only, both because the whole inquiry was dent, who, like myself, may have all the will, but not the time, adequately to meet your great expectations. Before commencing, however, I must attend to a circumstance which cannot but be uppermost in the minds of all habitual attendants at these so vast, and because systematic efforts are annual gatherings; it is that, but for a se- now being made by the Indian Government vere accident, there would have been pres- to obtain photographs and histories of the ent here to-night the oldest surviving, and native Indian tribes. Their efforts are, as indeed the first but two, of the Presidents regards the photographs obtained in India, of the British Association; my geological eminently successful, which renders it all friends will understand to whom I allude, the more disappointing that the descriptive as that rock of science in whom age and the heat and shocks of scientific controversy have wrought no metamorphosis, and developed no cleavage planes - a man of whom both Norwich and the Association are proud - your Canon, our father, Sedgwick. My first duty as president is the pleasant one of introducing to you the members of the International Congress of Pre-historic Archæology, who, under the presidency of Sir John Lubbock, himself a master of this branch of knowledge, open their third ses matter appended to them in this country, and which is happily anonymous, is most discreditable to the authority under which it is issued. I am informed that measures have been taken to repair this, and that Col. Meadows Taylor, than whom a more competent man could not be found, has been appointed to undertake the literary and scientific portions in future. It will, no doubt, surprise many here to be told that there exists within 300 miles of the British capital of India a tribe of Semisavages, who habitually erect dolmens, sion to-morrow in this city. The researches menhirs, cysts and cromlechs, almost as which specially occupy the attention of the gigantic in their proportions, and very simiCongress are, perhaps, the most fascinating lar in appearance and construction to the that ever engaged the faculties of man, and so-called Druidical remains of Western Eupursued as they now are in a scientific rope; and, what is still more curious. spirit, and in due subjection to scientific though described and figured nearly a quar ter of a century ago by Col. Yule, the emi- is a standing stone, and a dolmen a table nent oriental geographer, except by Sir J. Lubbock, they are scarcely alluded to in the modern literature of pre-historic monuments. In the Bengal Asiatic Journal for 1844 you will find Col. Yule's description of the Khasia people of East Bengal, an Indo-Chinese race, who keep cattle but drink no milk, estimate distances traversed by the mouthfuls of pawn chewed en route, and among whom the marriage tie is so loose that the son commonly forgets his father when the sister's son inherits property and rank. Dr. Thomson and I dwelt for some months among the Khasia people, now eighteen years ago, and found Col. Yule's account to be correct in all particulars. The undulatory eminences of the country, some 4,000 feet to 6,000 feet above the level of the sea, are dotted with groups of huge unpolished squared pillars and tabular slabs, supported on three or four rude piers. In one spot, buried in a sand grove, we found a nearly complete circle of menhirs, the tallest of which was 30 feet out of the ground, 6 feet broad, and 2 feet 8 inches thick; and in front of each was a dolmen or cromlech of proportion stone, &c. At the date of Col. Yule's, as of my visit to these people, our intercourse with them was limited, and not always friendly; we were ignorant of their language, and they themselves far from communicative. Of late, however, the country has been more opened up, and the establishment of a British cantonment among them renders it all the more important that the inquiry into their origin, language, beliefs, customs, &c. should be followed up without delay. This will now be done, thanks to your representations, and I cannot doubt but that it will throw great light upon that obscure and important branch of pre-historic archæology, the megalithian monuments of Western Europe. The Council of the Association, upon the recommendation of the Biological Section, appointed a committee to report upon the subject of the government of the natural history collections of the British Museum, which resulted in a deputation, who presented to the Prime Minister, in the name of the Council, that it was desirable these collections be placed under the control of a single officer, who should be directly re ately gigantic pieces of rock, while the sponsible to a Minister of the Crown; and largest slab hitherto measured is 32 feet this opinion was shared by an overwhelmhigh, 15 feet broad, and 2 feet thick. Sev-ing majority of British naturalists. The eral that we saw had been very recently reasons stated were that there appeared no erected, and we were informed that every reason why the national collections of natuyear some are put up, but not in the rainy ral history should be administered in a way season, which we spent in the country. different from that which was found appli The method of removing the blocks is by cutting grooves, along which fires are lighted, and into which, when heated, cold water is run, which causes the rock to fissure along the groove; the lever and rope are the only mechanical aids used in transporting and erecting the blocks. The objects of their erection are various sepulture, marking spots where public events had occurred, &c. It is a curious fact that the Khasian word for a stone, "man," as commonly oc cable to the Royal Gardens and botanical collections at Kew, the Museum of Practical Geology, and the Royal Observatory at Greenwich; and that the interposition of any board or committee between the superintendent of the collections and the Government must interfere with the responsibility of the superintendent and the efficient control of the Minister. It was not for the first time that this subject had been brought before Her Majesty's Government, and in curs in the names of their villages and deed before the selfsame Minister; for ten places as that of man, maen, and men does years previously a few naturalists, consistin those of Brittany, Wales, Cornwall, &c.;, ing of Messrs. Bentham, Bush, Darwin, thus Mansmai signifies in Khasia the stone Huxley, Dr. Carpenter, and myself, togethof oath, Mamloo, the stone of salt, Man- er with the late Profs. Lindley, Henslow, flong, the grassy stone, &c., just as in Harvey, and Henfrey, presented a memoWales Penmaen Mawr signifies the hill of rial to Mr. Disraeli, then, as now, a Ministhe big stone, and in Brittany a menhyr ter, embodying precisely the same views as to the government of the Natural History | Ipswich; it requires some space, many picDepartment of the British Museum, to- torial illustrations, magnified views of the gether with a scheme for the administration smaller organs and their structure, and coof the whole Metropolitan natural history pious legible descriptive labels; and it should Collection, geological and botanical; and I not contain a single specimen more than is have only to add, regarding this document, wanted. The other requirements of a prothat the surviving memorialists have not vincial museum are - complete collections during the ten intervening years found rea- of the plants and animals of the province, son to alter the views therein expressed on which should be kept entirely apart from any vital point. Of the objections to the the instructional series, and from everything present system of government by trustees, else. The curator of the museum should some of the most grave have been stated be able to give elementary demonstrations by Mr. Andrew Murray, in a communication (Report for 1867; 1867 Transactions of Sections, p. 95) made to the Biological Section at Dundee; to which I would only add, that though the zoological collections are the finest in the world, and the geological and palæontological of prodigious extent and value, there are of the 45 trustees only three who have any special knowledge whatsoever of the branches of science these collections illustrate; that since Sir Joseph (not lectures, and quite apart from any powers of lecturing that he may possess) upon this classified series to schools and others, for which a fee should be charged, and go to the support of the institution. And the museum might be available (under similar conditions of payment) for lectures and other demonstrations. Did such a museum exist in Norwich, I am sure that there is not an intelligent schoolmaster in the city who would not see that his school profited Banks' death, nearly half a century ago, no by the demonstrator's offices, nor a parent botanist has ever been appointed a trustee, who would grudge the trifling fee. You though the Banksian Herbarium and Botani- boast of a superb collection of birds of cal Library, then among the most valuable in Europe, were left by their owner to the nation, and, in fine, that the interests of botany have by their trustees been greatly neglected. Much as has been written upon the uses of museums, I believe that the subject is still far from being exhausted; for in the present state of education in this country, these appear to me to afford the only means of efficiently teaching to schools the elements of zoology and physiology. I say in the present state of education, because I believe it will be many years before we have schoolmasters and mistresses trained to teach these subjects, and many more years before either provincial or private schools will be supplied with such illustrative specimens as are essential for the teacher's purposes. Confining myself to the consideration of provincial and local museums and their requirements for educational purposes, each should contain a series of specimens illustrating the principal and some prey; how much would the value of this be enhanced were it accompanied by such an illustration of the nature, habits and affinities of the Raptores as might well be obtained by an exhibition of the skeleton and dissected organs of one hawk and one owl, so laid out and ticketed that a schoolboy should see the structure of their beaks, feet, wings, feathers, bones, and internal organs should see why it is that hawks and owls are pre-eminent among birds for power of sight and flight; for circling and for swooping; for rapacity, voracity, and tenacity of life - should see, in short, the affinities and special attributes of birds of prey? This, which refers to the teaching of natural history, is an operation altogether apart from training the minds to habits of exact observation, which, as is now fully admitted, is best attained in schools by Prof. Henslow's method of teaching botany. Excellent manuals of many branches of geology are now published, which are invaluable to the advanced student and dem of the lesser divisions of the animal and onstrator; but from which the schoolboy re coils, who would not refuse to accept objects and pictures as memory's pegs, on which to hang ideas, facts, and hard names. To schoolboys, skeletons have often a strange fascination, and upon the structure of these and the classification of the vertebrata much depends. What boy that had ever been shown their skulls would call a seal or porpoise a fish, or believe a hedge vegetable kingdoms, so disposed in welllighted cases as that an inquiring observer may learn therefrom the principles upon which animals and plants are classified, the relations of their organs to one another and to those of their allies, the functions of those organs, and other matters relating to their habits, uses, and place in the economy of Nature. Such an arrangement has not been carried out in any museum known to hog could milk cows, as I am told many me, though partially attained in that at boys in Norfolk and Suffolk, as elsewhere, do believe implicitly? A series of illus- | provincial museums, when space is an obtrated specimens, occupying some 5,800 ject, there is no better plan than rectangular feet of wall-space, would give at a glance long rooms, with opposite windows on each a connected and intelligible elementary view of the classification and structure of the whole animal kingdom; it would stand in the same relation to a complete museum and Systema Naturæ as a chart on which the principal cities and coastlines are clearly laid down does to a map crowded with undistinguishable details. Much of the utility of museums depends on two conditions often strangely overlooked their situation and their lighting and interior arrangements. The provincial museum is too often huddled away, almost out of sight, in a dark, crowded, and dirty thoroughfare, where it pays dear for groundrent, rates, and taxes, and cannot be extended; the object, apparently, being to catch country people on market days. Such localities are frequented by the town's people only when on business, and when they consequently have no time for sight-seeing. In the evening, or on holidays, when they could visit the museum, they naturally prefer the outskirts of the town to its centre. side, and buttress cases projecting into the room between each pair of windows. This arrangement combines economy of space with perfect illumination, and affords facilities for classification. Upon this plan the large museum at Kew is built, where the three principal rooms are 70 feet long, by 25 feet wide, and each accommodates 1,000 square feet of admirably-lighted cases, 6,700 feet of wall-room for pictures and for portraits of naturalists, besides two fire-places, four entrances, and a well-staircase 11 feet each way. A circular building, with cases radiating from the wall between the windows, would probably be the best arrangement of all. A light spiral staircase in the centre would lead to the upper stories. Two or more of the bays might be converted into private rooms without disturbing the symmetry of the interior or intercepting the lighting of the cases. The proportions of the basement and first floor might be such as to admit of additional stories being added, and the roof be so constructed as to be re Hence, too, the country gentry scarcely movable without difficulty when an additionknow of the museum's existence; and I al story was required; furthermore, rectannever remember to have heard of a provin- gular galleries might be built, radiating from cial museum that was frequented by schools, the central building, and lighted by opposite but rather the contrary. I do not believe that this arises from indifference to knowledge on the part of the upper classes or of teachers, but to the generally uninstructive nature of the contents of these museums, and their uninviting exterior and interior. There are plenty of visitors of all classes to the museums at Kew, despite the outer attractions of the gardens, and I know no more pleasing sight than these present on a Sunday and Monday afternoon, when crowded by intelligent visitors, directing their children's attention to the ticketed objects in the cases. The Museum should be in an open grassed square or park, planted with trees, in or in the outskirts of the town, a main object being to secure cleanliness, a cheerful aspect, and space for extension. Now, vegetation regetation is the best interceptor of dust, which is injurious to the specimen as well as unsightly, while a cheer windows, with buttress-cases between each pair of windows. In respect of its natural history collections, the position of the British Museum appears to me to be a disadvantageous one; it is surrounded by miles of streets, including some of the principal metropolitan thoroughfares, which pour clouds of dust and the product of coal-combustion into its area day and night; and I know few more disappointing sights, to me, than its badly-lighted interior presents on a hot and crowded public holiday, when whole families from London and its outskirts flock to the building. Then young and old may be seen gasping for fresh air in its galleries, with no alternative but the hotter and dustier streets to resort to. How different it would be were these collections removed to the townward end of one of the great Parks, where spacious and well-lighted galleries could be built, among trees, grass and fountains; ful aspect and grass and trees will attract and where whole families need not any more visitors, and especially families and schools. be cooped up for the day in the building, If the external accessories of provincial but avail themselves of the fresh air and its museums are bad, the internal are often accessories at the same time as they profit worse; the rooms are usually lighted by by the collection. Norwich, I hear-and windows on one side only, so that the cases I hear it with surprise - has no public park between the walls are dark, and those op- worthy of the name. That she may soon posite the windows reflect the light when have one should be the endeavour of every viewed obliquely, and when viewed in front citizen, and to have a good instructional the visitor stands in his own light. For museum transferred to it should be the as |