SESSION 1896-97. 



WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14th, 1896. 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS 



BY 



Mr. J. P. SLINGSBY ROBERTS 



(President). 



SOME RECENT ACHIEVEMENTS IN 

 PRACTICAL SCIENCE. 



In choosing the subject of my address, I had iu my mind the 

 thought that it is well from time to time to review the 

 progress made in those branches of science which are within the 

 purview of this Society. I attempt no more than this, and 

 shall glance therefore at some of the more notable results 

 obtained in the chief departments of science in language as 

 little technical as possible. 



One of the most characteristic features of the latter half of 

 the nineteenth century is the manner in which the forces of nature 

 have been bent by man to practical uses. Nowhere is this more 

 markedly evident than in the domains of electricity, of chemistry, 

 and of biology. The man who, when Faraday first obtained an 

 electric current by the insertion and withdrawal of a magnet in 

 and out of a coil of wire, had prophesied the development of the 

 modern dynamo-generator or dynamo-motor would have been 

 regarded as an amiable enthusiast. Yet to-day, new branches of 

 knowledge are opening out on every hand, thanks to the means of 

 producing electricity which have sprung from Faraday's histori- 

 cal discovery. It is not only in the production of light and in 

 the production of power that electricity threatens to revolutionize 

 the world. In the production of heat also valuable results have 

 already been obtained. The electric furnace enables us to subject 

 considerable masses of matter to the highest temperatures yet 



