Pi'esidenVs Address. 43 



plant life; following each of these back to their origin, both 

 in their present and past forms, and from all the facts to 

 complete, in all its parts and details, the tree of life with all 

 its historical relations. Along with this work, our knowledge 

 of the action of certain ions upon the simpler forms of life 

 may be extended, so that we may fully understand all the 

 chemistry of the vital processes, together with the causes of 

 chemical activity in both organic and inorganic substances. 

 The solutions of these problems may give us the full explana- 

 tion of how the changes in evolution occur, of what necessi- 

 tates them, and also make clear the laws of heredity. Geolo- 

 gists have mapped in detail, and carefully studied, only a small 

 part of the earth's crust; much basal work of this character 

 remains to be done. The composition of the interior, the 

 mineralogical relations of the rocks, the segregation of the 

 ores, the causes producing great movements of the crust, be 

 they exceedingly slow or rapid, more exact standards for 

 measurement of time, that our conclusions may not be such 

 ■crude estimates — all these phases of geology present problems 

 which demand solution, both from a theoretical and econom- 

 ical aspect. 



We have the vortex ring hypothesis as the explanation of 

 the relation of electricity and magnetism to matter; the con- 

 ditions of twist in the universal ether for the suspicion by 

 some that all the elements are composed of one primal sub- 

 stance. These are contributions of the nineteenth century, as 

 yet barely a working hypothesis, awaiting the experimental 

 evidence of the twentieth century to confirm, modify, or over- 

 throw them. The nineteenth century gave us the atom, its 

 w^eight, its laws of combinations, but not its exact form or 

 nature. In fact, the twentieth century has already so far 

 modified our conception of the atom as to leave us only its 

 combining weight. 



Experimental evidence proves to us that different ions com- 

 bine with others in different ratios, but who knows as yet the 

 basal reason for such combinations. Two clear solutions, one 

 of silver nitrate and one of hydrochloric acid, when mixed 

 form a precipitate. A lump of sugar put into a glass of pure 

 water dissolves, a piece of gold does not. A spoonful of salt 

 put into a glass of pure water ionizes, and thus forms an 

 electrolyte; a spoonful of sugar dropped into a similar glass 

 .of water goes into solution but does not form an electrolyte 



