The Glasgow Meeting of the British Association

Abstract

THE meeting of the British Association which opens in Glasgow next week will be the fifth to be held in that city. The first Glasgow meeting in 1840, presided over by the Marquis of Breadalbane, was attended by 1353 members, and resulted in grants being distributed for scientific purposes to the amount of £1546 16s. 4d The general proceedings of that meeting were very similar to those of British Association meetings of later years; perhaps the most conspicuous difference being the opening of the meeting with an address not by its president but by Murchison on behalf of himself and his co-secretary, Sabine, in which the activities of the Association during the preceding year were reviewed. In addition to giving an interesting summary of such activities, the secretaries in their address stressed particularly the importance of the Association as a channel for impressing upon Government the opinions and claims of science, and it is of equal interest to note in the address indications of cordial co-operation in this respect between the British Association and the Royal Society. In 1840 the Association met in seven sections, A-G; section B, now devoted to geography, represented in those days medical science; D represented biology as a whole, and the younger sections H to M, representing various specialised subdivisions of biological science, are in the 1840 report conspicuous by their absence. Amongst the sectional officers of this first Glasgow meeting were: J. D. Forbes, Airy, Whewell, Graham, Lyell, Buckland, De la Beche, Smith, W. J. Hooker, Edward Forbes—assuredly an impressive list!