The British Association

Abstract

Wednesday Night. THE meeting of the British Association which opens to-night, after twenty-four years' absence, in Bath, will be the fifty-eighth. At the meeting of 1864, the President was Sir Charles Lyell, and the occasion was rendered memorable by the presence at once of Dr. Livingstone and Bishop Colenso, both at the time filling a large space in the public eye. Though a vast majority of the members of the Association would prefer to visit Bath to either Birmingham or Manchester, the latter towns possess in Owens College and the Town Hall buildings which offer greater conveniences for the meeting of a scientific Congress. In Bath the Sections will be somewhat scattered. The Physical Science Section meets at the St. James's Hall; the Mechanical Section in the Masonic Hall; the Chemical Section in the Friends' Meeting-House; Geology and Biology are housed at the Mineral Water Hospital, with the Blue Coat School for sub-sections; Geography at the Guildhall, and Anthropology at the Grammar School; while the President's address and some of the popular lectures, as well as the concluding general meeting, will be delivered at the Drill Hall. The Mayor gives a conversazione to-morrow in the Assembly Rooms, and the Chairman and Local Committee give another on Tuesday. A large number of foreign visitors, especially geologists for the International Geological Congress to be held in London on the iyth inst, are expected. Amongst those already arrived are Prince Roland Bonaparte; Profs. Dufont, Gilbert, Capellini, Stephenson, Lory, von Koenen, Frazer, Kalkowsky, and Waagen.