4 INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
secretaries. ‘To one meeting the greatest lustre was given by the 
presidency of H.R.H. the Prince Consort. As there is a 
brotherhood of all nationalities in science, it may be pardonable 
when from my own bit of career I allude to some experiences of 
forty-four years ago, while attending as an active member what 
might be called the German Association for the Advancement of 
Science. A flight of thought brings vividly before me again 
such illustrious personages as Schleiden, one of the earliest 
investigators of the living cellule; D’Alton, one of the founders 
of embryology ; Langenbeck, the great and conservative surgical 
operator and his long-renowned disciple, Esmarch. There were 
also the Scandinavians Oersted, Forchammer and Steenstrup, 
the one the main discoverer of electromagnetism, the other 
eminent in northern geology, the third an early expounder of 
alternative generation. It is as if I hear once more the voice 
also of Kunze, the pteridologist ; of Rammelsberg, a leading 
expert in analytic chemistry ; of Waitz, the horticultural mono- 
grapher of the Ericez ; of Volger, one of the great authorities on 
voleanoes; of Krauss, the zoologic Caffrarian explorer; of 
Sonder, one of the authors of the Cape-flora, and of Schacht, 
Roeper and Muenter, the eminent morphologists and physio- 
logists; some of gay communicativeness, others of calmer 
reservedness—all spreading knowledge in their own way, all 
happy and elated among their scientific compeers, but also well 
aware, that their coming together then might be an only one in 
life! It is, as if I were brought once more face to face with 
many a hero in science, nearly all now numbering with the dead ; 
some of whom having attended the earliest meetings of the 
British Association, and thus by their appearance, then grey, 
among a multitude of junior investigators, linked together in a 
most fascinating and exalting manner one generation with another 
in science. A felicitation could then still be sent to Oken, the 
founder. You can all enter into the feelings of Virchow, who at 
the Berlin meeting of the German Association in 1886, while 
unfolding to the 3000 members once more the roll-book of 1828. 
There were the names of Humboldt, as President, of Berzelius, 
Ehrenberg, Woehler, Rudolphi, Gauss, Weber, Johannes Mueller, 
Mitscherlich, Rose, Magnus, of Oersted also, and of many 
another scientific immortality, each either a founder of a branch 
of science or a rearer of it into extensive vigour. Well may 
Virchow have exclaimed, that it was as if life became infused 
once more into the dead signatures! No doubt many assembled 
now in this hall experienced similar emotions, when attending 
meetings of the British Association, where they first of all, and 
perhaps never again, saw individually some of the corypheans, of 
whom they had ever so often heard and read, for whom they 
cherished an unlimited veneration, and whose memory became 
thus dearer still. Some of the younger members, now here 
