PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, Vll 



.The adoption of the Report was moved by the Hon. 

 A. Norton, seconded by Mr. F. Whitteron, and carried. 



The President then delivered the following address : — 

 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 



Life, Chiefly Bacterial. 



Life! — What is it? and Whence came it? These questions 

 have pazzled the philosophers of the mental and natural schools, 

 and the answers are not yet. 



We see life ; we may think we know it ; but we fail to 

 define it. 



Lite has been described as a condition of matter — " If 

 one substance exhibits the property of combustibility, it burns ;, 

 if another, on being stretched, returns to its original size, it is 

 elastic ; and if a third presents dififerentiated growth, involving 

 assimilation and excretion, or exhibits contractility and 

 sensibility, it lives." 



Spencer's definition is well known, but is cumbersome, 

 unsatisfactory, and not likely to be popular : — " the definite 

 combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and 

 successive, in correspondence with external co-existences and 

 sequences." 



Beclard's " Organisation in Action" is short and crisp and 

 as explicit as present knowledge warrants. 



What of the seed that has for centuries, or tens of them, 

 lain hid in the mummy sarcophagus and has then fallen " into 

 good ground and brought forth fruit ? " Was it alive all the 

 years or had it only the power of living? 



And the replies to the second question are as vague. If our 

 earth was formed, as astronomers declare, from the molecular 

 Fnttiflc, whirled oft" as a ringed and molten mass from the' 

 System's centre ; and if, from the testimony of the rocks, 

 geologists agree with the theory of a molten birth ; and that, 

 with due regard to the eft'ects of a glacial period, the cooling 

 now is only of the crust and the internal fires are still raging, 

 the Earth uiast have passed through eons of time and cooled 

 down to something like its present temperature, before it was 

 fitted to support life, or at least such life as we now know, for 

 this yields readily to heat ; the boiling point upheld for a few 

 minutes is destructive of most organisms, while the most 

 resistantt endospores cannot withstand a temperature of 800" F. 



