3 
It would greatly contribute to the interest of the meetings if 
members and their friends would kindly bring to them for ex- 
hibition and explanation any objects of interest which they may 
meet with from time to time, especially microscopical preparations. 
Proposed by Dr, Eastes and seconded by Mrs. Walton 
That the Report and Balaneec Sheet be received and adopted. 
Carried unanimously. 
The President, Dr. FitzGerald, then gave his annual address on : 
THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE IN _ 1890. 
—:0:—— 
«There is nothing new under the Sun,”’ so says the wise man, 
and I suppose none of us will deny the truth of that assertion ; 
nevertheless the discoveries and inventions with which this 
century has been fraught, are, at any rate presented to us in the 
guise of novelties. It is to science that we are indebted for the 
adaptation of the old and immutable laws of nature to the needs and 
demands of the world’s ever increasing population. The progress 
of science is so rapid, that the accepted theory of to-day may have 
to be abandoned to-morrow; indeed, the history of science has 
been, not inaptly termed ‘‘ The history of exploded errors and 
forsaken doctrines!’ I was much struck when reading the report 
of the British Association’s meeting at Leeds last autumn, with 
the comparison drawn by Sir F. Abel, between the scientific 
summary of the great naturalist, Professor Owen, in his inaugural 
address at Leeds in 1858, and that which he (Sir F. Abel), was 
prepared to deliver to his hearers. To give you an illustration, 
thirty years ago Darwinism was hardly known and the ‘“ Survival 
of the Fittest’? was a theory not as yet propounded ; the electric 
telegraph was then in its infancy, and the successful laying of an 
Atlantic cable was held to be more than doubtful. The Metro- 
politan Railway had not then been commenced, and electricity as 
the motive power for trains, steamboats, or tram-cars was un- 
thought of; the electric light was not then devised, nor was the 
telephone or phonograph invented. 
There is no doubt that electricity is the special branch of 
scientific research which has, during the past thirty years, been 
of the greatest practical use to mankind. It is a curious coinci- 
dence that the first Electric Lighting Bill was passed in 1882 in 
the year in which the late Sir W. Siemens was president of the 
British Association, and although much delay has arisen in the 
practical working of the scheme, it is now in a fair way to be 
accomplished, the delay having been of actual service in affording 
