Sections B and C. 



PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 

 By C. W. Methven, M.I.C.E., F.R.S.E., F.R.I.B.A. 



The subject with which I have been most closely identified in 

 South Africa is, as I daresay many of you know, that of its 

 Harbours, but I have so recently contributed a paper on these to 

 the Institution of Civil Eni^ineers in Lonflon (a good deal of which 

 has been published in the Press) that I do not propose to make it 

 the principal theme of this address, which otherwise I might have 

 done. I propose rather to venture upon a few remarks of a general 

 nature touching one or two of the various headings comprised under 

 this section, but in particular those of Engineering and Architecture. 



We are now well into the beginning of a century which pro- 

 mises, in the domain of scientific research and discovery, to eclipse 

 even the 19th Century, the most wonderful the world has ever seen, 

 and I think many of the younger members of this Association will 

 live to see this prediction verified. 



At the present moment thousands of eager and highly organized 

 intellects are hard at work all over Europe and America, and may 

 we not add South Africa, on problems in Chemistry, Biology, 

 Physics, Astronomy, Geologv, Electricity, Aerostatics, etc., some of 

 which appear to be on the brink of solution, and which will then 

 revolutionise not only the methods of to-day, but open up still newer 

 fields for invention and discovery, and flood with light the dim vistas 

 of those realms of speculation in which many of us are groping for 

 truth, in directions not only leading towards the amelioration of our 

 temporal wants and necessities, but towards the elimination of the 

 false and the determination of the true as affecting the religions of 

 humanity. 



The address then dealt shortly with some of the problems 

 enumerated above, and proceeded as follows : — 



But no period in the world's history has been so prolific of 

 discoverv and invention as the century we have so recently left behind 

 us. The heritage which has been bequeathed to the youth of to-day 

 by their immediate forefathers, is one which will make calls upon 

 their intellectual powers as well as on their manhood, which will 

 tax their energy and resourcefulness to the utmost degree if they are 

 to keep pace with the times in which they live, let alone take a lead 

 in the work of advancement along the lines of scientific thought and 

 discovery. The recognition of this by the older minds is leading, 

 I am glad to say, in this country to the establishment of technical 

 schools which will be of inestimable value to its young men and 



