PRESIDENCY 109 



duration of the coal supplies in the mining fields of 

 the British Isles, and passed on to consider water- 

 power and other alternatives to the use of coal. 

 William Ramsay in 1911 did the same. Crookes's 

 address in 1898 is still in demand by inquirers into 

 the subject of the world's wheat supplies, because he 

 formulated an estimate of them (modified though 

 it has been by later extensive developments in agri- 

 culture), and foreshadowed the failure of avail- 

 able wheat-lands to maintain their fertility : he then 

 pointed out how chemical science might aid in restor- 

 ing that fertility. Armstrong again, in the address 

 already cited, incidentally adverted to our laborious 

 method of writing, and pleaded for the common 

 adoption of a new script tending in the direction of 

 shorthand in so far as it would use single symbols 

 for the commonest syllables. He was also eloquent 

 in favour of the adoption of a metric system 

 of weights and measures a subject which other 

 presidents have not neglected. Out of Thomson's 

 (Kelvin's) monumental address in 1871 the passage 

 which most impressed itself upon the popular 

 imagination was that in which he asked how life 

 originated upon the earth, and offered, as a not 

 unscientific hypothesis, the possibility of its meteoric 

 origin. 



Such addresses as these, whatever their value 

 otherwise, demonstrate to all men that science is 

 thinking with and for them, about matters which 

 must interest and most deeply concern them. Others 

 may arrest the untrained listener mainly through the 

 profundity of thought which they reveal, and the 

 beauty of its verbal expression. Of such character 

 is TyndalTs famous address at Belfast in 1874, though 



