Fourteenth Annual Meeting. 543 



Votes oj Thanks.— Votes of thanks to the honorary officers for their 

 services during the past year were passed, Dr. J. Allan Thomson specially 

 acknowledging the assistance he had received from Mr. Macdonald in the 

 library. 



31st January, 1917. D. Petrie, Chairman. 



PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 



The following is the presidential address delivered at the annual 

 meeting of the Board of Governors of the New Zealand Institute, at 

 Wellington, on the 30th January. 1917. by Professor W. B. Benham, 

 F.R.S. :— 



Gentlemen, — I desire to thank you most sincerely for the honour you did me 

 at the last annual meeting in electing me as your President for the year. I trust that 

 you will overlook the many shortcomings on my part, as they will be counteracted by 

 the good will of the officers of the Board and by the work of the Standing Committee. 



In looking through the addresses delivered by the previous occupants of the chair, 

 I feel very diffident of my ability to carry on my duties as efficiently as they have done, 

 and feel rather appalled at my inability to deal adequately in this address with the 

 various matters with which this Institute is concerned. 



Although it has been customary to make allusion to those members of the Institute 

 who have died during the year, I find in previous addresses no reference to distinguished 

 men of science of Britain who may have passed away. I propose on this occasion to 

 refer to some of the leaders in the various branches of science whose deaths have had 

 to be recorded during 1916. 



Professor Judd, F.R.S., for many years Professor of Geology at the Royal College 

 of Science at South Kensington, was perhaps especially known for his studies of the 

 volcanic districts in Europe. 



Elias Metchnikoff, a Russian by birth, was in the earlier part of his life known to 

 zoologists as a student of the structure and embryology of lower invertebrates, in 

 which he made discoveries of great significance. While thus engaged in these micro- 

 scopic studies, he observed again and again, in animals of widely different character, 

 certain peculiar cells which were highly mobile — moving about in the living tissues 

 in a very active fashion ; and in certain of them he discovered that these cells were 

 engaged in feeding upon foreign substances, organic and inorganic, which had obtained 

 access to the tissues. To these cells he gave the name " phagocytes," and he esta- 

 blished the fact that they are of universal occurrence. He went further than this : 

 he demonstrated that in the higher animals these phagocytes are of prime importance 

 in the process known as " inflammation," and that they are intimately related to the 

 phenomenon of " immunity " from disease, the proper understanding of which has 

 revolutionized medical theory and practice. This is one instance of a discovery in 

 pure science being of immense value to mankind. 



Professor Silvanus P. Thompson, F.R.S. , made very important discoveries in 

 electricity, magnetism, and optics. 



Sir William Ramsay, F.R.S., the great chemist, passed away at the comparatively 

 early age of sixty-three. He was the discoverer of the peculiar inert gases argon, neon, 

 helium, crypton, and xenon, some of which occur in the atmosphere. Confronted with 

 a type of element entirely devoid of chemical properties, he was forced to rely entirely 

 on their physical properties in order to put them in their proper relation to the other 

 elements, and he solved the problem by aid of molecular and atomic conceptions. He 

 was a pioneer in the work, and exhibited great manipulative skill in designing the 

 apparatus and performing the necessary experiments. A detailed history of these 

 discoveries is one of the romances of modern science. At a later date he pursued the 

 study of radio-active emanations — discovered by Rutherford elsewhere — as exhibited 

 by some of these gases. 



Sir Lauder Brunton, F.R.S., gained high distinction by his work on physiological 

 medicine. He was one of the first among practising physicians who used no empirical 

 remedies without first seeking to discover their mode of action — that is, he correlated 

 his clinical knowledge with laboratory work ; and by his work pharmacology has 

 become a definite branch of science. 



