iPRESIDENT's ADDRESS. 5 



Society, and the settlement of the details of his scheme for the 

 future encouragement of research. 



The Society's history then is naturally divisible into two 

 cliapters — a first period of seventeen years, during the whole of 

 which, except for the few months of the illness which ended his 

 labours. Sir William voluntarily and without saying anything 

 about it that he could avoid, personally undertook the responsi- 

 bility of the management of the Society's affairs in the way I 

 have indicated; and the subse(iuent period of a little more than 

 twenty-hve years to date, during which the service and the 

 assistance which he voluntarily rendered during his lifetime, 

 automatically, one may say, by means of trusts committed to 

 the Council, became operant after his decease. Every member 

 is in a position to know what these amount to, now that Sir 

 William's plans have been realised completely. But the realisa- 

 tion did not come about quite so simply or so soon as he 

 expected, the most important deterrent being the financial 

 crisis of 1893. Just about the time that all difficulties had 

 been overcome, the war broke out; and the Society's immediate 

 future is likely to be affected as possible new conditions may 

 arise and requii^. In 1925, only eight years ahead, the Society, 

 if all goes well, will attain its jubilee; and this we may expect 

 to be celebrated in an appropriate manner. It will also furnish 

 occasion for a more detailed account of the Society's history 

 than has hitherto been possible, and for an analysis of its fifty 

 years' work. Just at present, what I wish to do is to call to 

 mind an anniversary that is not without interest to us; to point 

 out, to new Members especially, that the Society has a history 

 that is, in large measure, bound up with that of a broad-minded, 

 far-seeing, generous man, without whose fostering care and help 

 there would have been no such Society as we know it, and whose 

 memory should not be allowed to be dimmed by the lapse of 

 time; and that, in addition to the material benefits which he 

 conferred on the Society, it may be said to have inherited not 

 only his example, but the spirit in which he did what he accom- 

 plished. Sir William was under no sort of obligation to do any- 



