THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 91 



enlisting the microscope in their service. I recently received a com- 

 munication from the Manager of a large brewery, inquiring whether, 

 and to what extent, the microscope might be expected to afford 

 assistance in the operation of brewing. Some of the most formid- 

 able difficulties of a brewer are connected with the process of 

 fermentation. This subject has had some little attention from 

 workers with the microscope, and it is not surprising that, having 

 learned this, manufacturers should ask us whether we can furnish 

 them with any practical results. The acquisition of knowledge and 

 the cultivation of science are delightful and beneficial of themselves, 

 but, in my opinion, the highest object of science, and the greatest 

 use of knowledge is that they be made practically advantageous and 

 beneficial to mankind. It is this feeling which has suggested the 

 tone of my remarks to-night. 



Before I retire, there is one paramount duty incumbent upon me, 

 and that is to thank you all for the hearty and cordial support which 

 you have given me during my two years of office. It would not 

 have been possible for the officers of the club, its committee, or 

 the members generally, to have supported me more efficiently and 

 kindly than they have done. Hence that which might have been 

 two years of irksome and arduous duty has been to me, on the con- 

 trary, a period of pleasurable enjoyment. I need not recount the 

 history of this period, but I trust that during the more brilliant 

 career of my successors in the Presidency, we may be able to look 

 back upon it with satisfaction, and that there may in the future be 

 moments when we may revert with pleasure to incidents of the past 

 two years. Like all its predecessors, this has been a season of 

 harmony and unanimity of action, although not, of necessity, one 

 of unanimity of opinions. As I first occupied this chair surrounded 

 by all the evidences of good feeling, so, now, I leave it with the 

 happy consciousness that there has not occurred one instance of 

 dissension, discord, or schism, unfortunately but too common in 

 large societies. It is no small honour to this club that throughout 

 its career it has been conspicuously remarkable for the absence of 

 party feeling and cliques. The good fellowship of the whole body 

 of its members having been averse from this mischievous tendency 

 has evidently been one of the causes of its unexampled success. 

 We still remain, as we were ten years ago, a club ; we still adhere 

 to our old programme of sociable microscopy : and if the world has 

 not been astonished by our great discoveries in science, it has, at 



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