24 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. — SECTIOX II. 



with Laplace's Nebular hypothesis, and are hastening with all 

 speed to leave what is coming to be regarded as a sinking ship.* 



Chemistry has undergone some very radical changes during the 

 past century : in fact, there is hardly a branch of science that 

 has been so protean. We remember the part that Sir Humphrey 

 Davy played in the creation of nineteenth century chemistry, 

 when, in 1807, the same year that witnessed the founding of the 

 Geological Society, he made his epoch-marking discoveries of the 

 metals of the alkalies. Since then Dal ton's Atomic Theory has 

 come and — no, I shall not say gone, — but it has suffered grievously 

 at the hands principally of the physicists — who, as has been said, 

 have sometimes furnished the atoms with bells, and at others 

 fashioned them into vortex-rings — with the result that to-day 

 chemical science is clad in robes whose pattern and embroideries 

 are not altogether unlike those that were fashionable in the days 

 of alchemy, when the philosopher's stone and the transmutation 

 of metals were matters of serious consideration. The outcome of 

 all this has been that the subject of the chemical constitution of 

 matter presents to-day a " somewhat chaotic state of affairs. "f 

 Perhaps some of us are drifting away from the views expressed 

 by Clerk-Maxwell in his famous lecture on " Molecules." that 

 the atoms " continue this day as they were created, perfect in 

 number and measure and weight, "J or from the inference drawn 

 by Sir John Herschel after pursuing a similar line of reasoning, 

 namely, that their uniformity of type and conduct stamped the 

 atoms as " manufactured articles " ;§ but let me remind you 

 that, if we do thus drift, it will only be to find under our lee a shore 

 that has usually been given a wide berth by scientists, for, if atoms 

 are simply concentrated energy, and all " matter is explained 

 away as being electricity and nothing but electricity," || the process 

 known to theologians as " Creation " becomes at all events scien- 

 tifically possible in a manner that has never seemed so feasible 

 as it has become within the last dozen years, and we go back to a 

 dictum far older than that of Clerk-Maxwell, that " things which 

 are seen were not made of things which do appear." That, at all 

 events, seems to be whither the New Chemistry is leading us to-day. 



In Biology, too, there are distinct evidences of a change of 

 thought. Spontaneous generation, the ignis fatuus of latter-day 

 science, has been practically laid to rest beside that will-o'-the- 

 wisp of an earlier century, perpetual motion, and, in the opinion 

 fo many, the dominance of Darwinism, as connoting development 

 by descent through the agency of natural selection, has passed 

 its zenith, and is now decadent. Of the fading away of the 

 Lamarckian views so strenuously defended by Herbert Spencer, 

 perhaps no clearer illustration can be afforded than the fear, to 



* Vide Prof. J. W. Gregory's Presidential Address to Section C, Brit. Assoc. 

 Report, 1907, Leicester, p. 493. 



j Dr. Hugh jNIarshall in " Annual Reports on the Progress of Chemistry," 

 1908, p. 33. 



X " Scientific Papers," Vol. 2, p. 377. 



> " Preliminary Discourse on the study of Natural Philosophy," p. 38. 

 Prof. R. K. Duncan : " The New Knowledge," p. 248. 



