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Monday i 1st December 1856. 



The Right Rev. Bishop TERROT, Vice-President, 

 in the Chair. 



Opening Address. By Bishop Terrot. 



The Council of the Royal Society have, in the course of the last 

 year, taken into serious consideration the state and prospects of the 

 Society, and have deliberated upon many propositions having for 

 their object to render our ordinary meetings more interesting, and 

 generally to increase the efficiency and usefulness of the Society. 

 Among other schemes of this nature, they have adopted one, in con- 

 formity with which I have now the honour of addressing you. They 

 have resolved that henceforth the winter session shall commence 

 with an Address from the President, or one of the Vice-Presidents, 

 leaving it, of course, to the judgment of the individual selected to 

 choose such topics as he may think most likely to excite, among the 

 Fellows, a deeper interest in the welfare of the Society, a more 

 earnest determination to render their scientific attainments, whatever 

 they may be, serviceable, not merely to the world at large, and to 

 the advancement of their own scientific reputation, but also to the 

 efficiency and reputation of our common object of interest — the 

 Royal Society of Edinburgh. 



Possessing, as we do, a President equally distinguished for his 

 science and for his love of science, for that which he has done him- 

 self, and for that which, by his open-handed liberality, he has invited 

 and enabled others to do, it would have been most natural and de- 

 sirable that he should have been requested to address you on this 

 occasion. You are aware, however, that the state of his health is 

 such as to render it very unadvisable that he should attend our 

 evening meetings, and the Council were consequently under the ne- 

 cessity of laying this duty upon one of the Vice-Presidents. There 

 also, you must be aware, the Council had but a small range of 

 choice. Your senior Vice-President, to whom every one would 

 have listened with interest and attention, and from whom even the 

 most advanced in science might have learned something new, is, I 

 regret to hear, obliged to retire to the Continent on account of the 



