102 ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 
At the risk of being thought discursive or digressive, I beg leave 
to refer to an event of great interest, with which we may be all 
more or less familiar, which makes us better acquainted with 
microscopic revelations, and brings us so close to the beginning of 
life, that the power to produce it from lifeless elements appears 
to be almost within our grasp. 
The Hneglish papers, by the royal mail steamship which arrived 
early in September, are occupied with lengthy accounts of the 
anniversary meeting of the British Association at Sheffield on 
the 20th August. These anniversaries have lost none of their 
interest for the British people. We learn from them the import- 
ance attached by all classes to scientific investigations. The 
Press uses its powerful combinations to spread abroad, with the 
utmost rapidity, over all the Empire, and to foreign countries, 
full details of the proceedings, employing for that purpose the 
energies which art and science have placed at its disposal. The 
railway and locomotive, the marine engine and screw propeller, 
the ocean cable and electric telegraph, all triumphs of science 
and genius within a‘century, engage in the work. Photography 
also, takes the portraits of the “President and other scientists of 
the Association, and then by electro-metallurgy makes them typo- 
graphy, placing before us in a newspaper correct likenesses of the 
men who, in Great Britain, contribute to the scientific advance- 
ment of the nation. Do we desire to know the subjects which 
engage the minds of these men? The press communicates them 
in “twenty- four hours after their delivery. They reach us by 
electric telegraph as quickly on this side of the Atlantic. In 
twelve days at farthest, by steam navigation. I may call all this 
the artistic application of Natural Science. The substance of the 
President’s address is before me. It treats of Protoplasm. He 
describes “Protoplasm, or living matter, as lying at the base of 
all living phenomena.” * * “a tangible and visible reality, which 
the ehewuet may analyse in his laboratory, the biologist scrutinize 
beneath his microscope and dissecting needle. All over the world, 
in fresh water and in salt, minute particles of protoplasm may be 
detected. In the famous amceba, which has arrested the atten- 
tion of naturalists, almost from the commencement of microscopi- 
eal observation, we have the essential characters of a cell, the 
morphological unit of organization, the physiological source of 
unicellular existence. But cells combine into organs, an organs 
into animals. Yet in the most complex animal the cell retains 
its andi vadiualaty sa Oe 
This, though not entirely new, is a lucid description of 
