110 ORGANISATION 



different effects, in this instance, were produced upon 

 the minds of some of his audience. 1 No further 

 analysis of the addresses must be ventured upon 

 here ; but it should be remembered that they have 

 been unrelieved, save very rarely, by any form of 

 ocular demonstration or illustration, and are pre- 

 sented under (and in some cases, it may be said, 

 have to contend against) circumstances of extreme 

 formality. Perhaps few would have this otherwise ; 

 but A, C. Ramsay showed signs of revolt against 

 the conservative practice. He, who at the Glasgow 

 meeting in 1840 had given his first scientific paper 

 on a geological model, maps, and sections of the 

 island of Arran, and made there some of the friend- 

 ships which had the most profound influence on his 

 career, ascended to the presidential chair of the 

 Association forty years after, at Swansea. He wrote 

 an address, indeed, and it was published, but he 

 did not read it. Instead, he spoke from a few 

 notes, and 'his lively inflections of voice, marked 

 Scottish accent, and energetic gestures . . . were a 

 novel and not unwelcome variation from the more 



1 Sir Oliver Lodge thus recalls impressions of the Belfast meeting : 

 ' Tyndall's address lasted nearly two hours, and towards the end the 

 atmosphere began, metaphorically, to smell of brimstone. Some 

 people began to go out, while others looked at each other in a horrified 

 manner. The impression was intensified by Huxley's most eloquent 

 discourse on animal automatism, in which he included man among 

 the other animal automata ; and on the Sunday following every 

 pulpit in the city seemed to be fulminating anathemas at the men 

 of science, and Huxley was challenged by one of the Ministers at the 

 railway station on his departure. Huxley's lecture was a marvellous 

 performance, delivered without a note and with hardly a movement 

 of the body, the flow of language seeming to involve no sort of hesitation 

 or difficulty. The other evening lecture was given by Sir John Lubbock 

 on wild flowers in relation to insects, and Tyndall's motion for a vote 

 of thanks was eloquent and picturesque.' 



