president's address. 617 



amongst the many others which then, as now, existed in all 



stages of metamorphosis, floating in the limitless regions of 



stellar space : — 



" Where never creeps a cloud, nor moves a wind, 

 Nor ever falls the least white star of snow, 

 Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans, 

 Nor sound of human sorrow mounts, to mar 

 Their sacred everlasting calm." 



Speculation and theory, founded on the investigations of 

 specialists in mathematics, physics and chemistry, are now carried 

 much farther back than this stage, far back even to the condition 

 before matter as such existed, when that which we now know as 

 matter was in the form to which the name of protyle has been 

 aptly applied by Sir William Crookes, and to which form, 

 curiously enough, recent researches on radium and its allies are 

 leading us to believe matter is again returning. This is a very 

 wonderful thought, and Sir William Crookes thoroughly grasped 

 its immense significance when, in speaking of radium, he recently 

 said : " Matter will sooner or later be dissolved into a ' formless 

 mist,' and the hour-hand of eternity will have completed one 

 revolution." 



With this period in the history of the earth we will not deal 

 to-night, but, starting at the nebular stage, we will commence 

 our brief retrospect. Let us imagine the material of which our 

 solar system is composed, in a state of disintegration, probably 

 dissociated into its constituent elements, and occupying a vast 

 portion of space having a diameter greater than the orbit of the 

 most distant planet, so much attenuated, indeed, as to be in a 

 condition resembling that of the gas inside an exhausted vacuum 

 tube. Matter in this condition would still obey the ordinary 

 physical laws, and so be subject to the action of gravity. 

 Such being the state of affairs, motion towards the centre 

 would begin. The individual atoms or molecules would 

 commence to move with a slow but constantly accelerating 

 motion, which might be so slight as only to amount in the first 

 instance to a few inches, or a few fractions of an inch, in many 

 years' time, but with all eternity in which to act this would be a 



