Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. This file was produced from images generously made available by the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions. THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION'S VISIT TO MONTREAL, 1884. LETTERS BY CLARA LADY RAYLEIGH, Printed for Private Circulation. INTRODUCTION. THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. (Reprinted from The Times, 1884) It seems early to begin to speak of the arrangements for the next meeting of the British Association, but it is a far cry to Montreal, and a proportionately long start must be made before the final leap is taken. So heartily have the Dominion Government and the Canadian _savants_ entered into the preparations that everything is ready; all the presidents, vice-presidents and secretaries of sections have been selected; all arrangements made with steamship companies and American railways; all excursions have been planned, and all possible routes provided for; instructions of the most detailed kind have been drawn up for the guidance of members; nothing has been left, indeed, except what depends on contingencies of time and place, so that Professor Bonney and his legion of officials may at any moment take up their portmanteaus and walk on shipboard. All this forwardness and completeness are largely due to the zeal of the High Commissioner, Sir Charles Tupper, and his energetic and obliging secretary, Mr. Colmer. When the decision was come to at Southampton to hold the meeting of 1884 in Canada there was widely expressed disapproval of the step, and doubt as to its legitimacy; but the prospect of entertaining the upper thousand of English science has evidently so greatly gratified our Canadian brothers that even the most stiff-necked opponent of the migration must be compelled to give in if he has a shred of good nature and brotherly feeling left. There are doubtless a few grumblers who will maintain that the Montreal assembly will not be a meeting of the _British_ Association; but after all this Imperial Parliament of Science could not be better occupied than in doing something to promote science in one of the most important sections of the British dominions. Indeed, since some maintain that so far as this country is concerned it has almost ceased to have a _raison d'etre_, might it not extend its functions and endeavour to exercise the same effective influence on the promotion of science in other parts of the Empire as it has undoubtedly done in the past in the Mother Country? It can scarcely hope ever to hold a meeting either in Australia or India, nor even, we fear, in South Africa; but there are other means Which it might adopt more appropriately than any other body to encourage the progress of science in these parts of the Empire, and make accessible to the public interested in it the good work which is being done, at least in some of the Australian colonies. In Canada itself there are several important