l6 THE PRKSIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 



Another event of good omen for the future has been the 

 prehniinary steps that have been taken to estabhsh closer 

 relations between the learned societies in East Anglia interested 

 in like studies to onr own. The need for imited work in all 

 scientific researcli and the evils of isolation in study are 

 increasingly evident, and we heartily welcome this prospect of 

 union with valued fellow-workers. 



I will not venture to attempt a review of the general 

 progress of science in the brandies in which we are chiefly 

 interested. It is more and more difficult to keep abreast with 

 progress, even of one branch of knowledge, and yet at the same 

 time the interdependence of the various branches of study 

 becomes more and more fascinating, yet bewildering. It is not 

 only difficult but impossible to define spheres of influence among 

 the sciences either in their abstract study or in their practical 

 ap[dications. Perhaps in nothing is tliis interpenetration more 

 marked than in the striking manner in which the phenomena of 

 life, and still more of the interdependence of the higher and lower 

 forms of life, complicate su many problems of modern scientific 

 thought. In Chemistry, for example, the marvellous progress 

 in the synthesis of organic compounds had seemed almost to do 

 away with any distinction between the organic and the inorganic, 

 but though these distinctions may seem obliterated as to the 

 resultant compounds, our results are obtained by processes that 

 throw little or no light on the natural life problem. We can 

 synthetise alcohol from olefiant gas, and we can, by oxydation with 

 spong\- platinum, change this into acetic acid. In this we but 

 chimsih- imitate tlie processes which, under the influence of the 

 lixing plant, synthetise starch from the gases of the air ; then, 

 by llie inimitable action of germination, transform it into sugar; 

 and thcTi, by the obscure intervention of a foreign micro-organism, 

 split it up (how we know not as yet) into alcohol and carbonic 

 acid, ready for yet another organism to transform (for unknown 

 reasons of its own) into acetic acid. 



Again, our conception of organic chemistry has been 

 revolutionised by the discovery firstly of the influence of the 

 nitrifying micro-organisms in transforming and modifying the 

 combined nitrogen of the soil, and still more of the semiparasitic 

 organisms to which apparently the supply of combined nitrogen 

 for higher plant life is largely due. It is impossible to over- 

 estimate the importance of this and of other cases of symbiosis. 



