ASSOCIATIONS FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. (BRITISH.) 



had been made with the British Museum for the 

 establishment of a bureau for ethnology. The 

 treasurer reported that the total receipts for the 

 year were 5,083, and the total expenditure 

 1,430. The annual subscriptions amounted to 

 800, and the sale of the associates' tickets 

 realized 1,028, and of ladies' tickets 639. The 

 usual vote of thanks was adopted for the retir- 

 ing president, Sir William Crookes, concerning 

 whom it was said that, while the presidential 

 addresses were often valuable contributions to 

 the literature of science, it was seldom that one 

 of them held the public interest and attention 

 so closely and so long as the address delivered 

 by Sir William Crookes last year had done. In 

 the evening the association met in the town 

 hall of Dover for the purpose of listening to the 

 inaugural address of the president. The retir- 

 ing president, Sir William Crookes, introduced 

 his successor with the following words : " To 

 abdicate is not us-ually considered the height of 

 human felicity; but when I consider how ad- 

 mirably fitted my successor is to sit in the presi- 

 dent's chair, I can assure you abdication becomes 

 a positive pleasure. Sir Michael Foster can have 

 no good wishes more eager and sincere than 

 mine, but I must wish him something special 

 for the sake of his peace of mind, his time, and 

 his credit. May he escape the dilemma that has 

 befallen me! I trust his year of office may not 

 he checkered by the necessity of writing a book 

 to defend the sanity of his address." 



Sir Michael Foster has held the chair of Physi- 

 ology at Cambridge since 1893, and his scientific 

 attainments have recently been recognized by the 

 <^ueen, who knighted him. Also, he is secretary 

 of the Royal Society. 



Inaugural Address of the President. In 

 beginning his address Sir Michael Foster paid a 

 well-deserved tribute to Sir Douglas Galton, who 

 presided at the Ipswich meeting in 1895, and who 

 died during the year, referring especially to the 

 earnest efforts made by the deceased scientist 

 toward securing the foundation of a national 

 establishment for the prosecution of prolonged 

 and costly physical researches. He said : " The 

 National Physical Laboratory has been found- 

 ed," and expressed his regret that Sir Douglas 

 41 was not spared to see the formal completion 

 of the scheme whose birth he did so much to 

 help, and which, to his last days, he aided in 

 more ways than one." Then, contrasting the 

 scientific conditions in 1799 with those of to-day, 

 he said: "In the year 1799 the knowledge of 

 oxygen, of the nature of water and of air, and, 

 indeed, the true conception of chemical composi- 

 tion and chemical change, was hardly more than 

 beginning to be, and the century had to pass 

 wholly away before the next great chemical idea, 

 which we know by the name of the atomic theory 

 of John Dalton, was made known." Concerning 

 electricity, which he called the " bright child of 

 the nineteenth century," he told of the crude 

 knowledge of its properties that existed a cen- 

 tury ago, and how we were to-day proud, and 

 justly proud, both of the material triumphs and 

 of the intellectual gains which it has brought 

 us, and we are full of, even larger hopes of it in 

 the future. " In 1799," he said, " the science of 

 geology, as we now know it, was struggling into 

 birth." Since then " its practical lessons have 

 brought wealth to many, its fairy tales have 

 brought delight to more, and round it hovers 

 the charm of danger, for the conclusions to which 

 it leads touch on the nature of man's beginning." 

 After describing the knowledge of biology in 

 1799, he said: "To-day the merest beginner in 



biologic study is aware that every living being, 

 even man himself, begins its independent exist- 

 ence as a tiny ball, of which we can, even ac- 

 knowledging to the full the limits of the optical 

 analysis at our command, assert with confidence 

 that in structure, using that word in its ordinary 

 sense, it is in all cases absolutely simple. It is 

 equally well known that the features of form 

 which supply the characters of a grown-up living 

 being, all the many and varied features of even 

 the most complex organism, are reached as the 

 goal of a road, at times a long road, of successive 

 changes; that the life of every being, from the 

 ovum to its full estate, is a series of shifting 

 scenes, which come and go, sometimes changing 

 abruptly, sometimes melting the one into the 

 other, like dissolving views, all so ordained that 

 often the final shape with which the creature 

 seems to begin, or is said to begin, its life in the 

 world is the outcome of many shapes, clothed 

 with which it in turn has lived many lives be- 

 fore its seeming birth. If we wish to measure 

 how far off in biologic thought the end of the 

 last century stands, not only from the end but 

 even from the middle of this one, we may imagine 

 Darwin striving to write the Origin of Species in 

 1799. We may fancy him being told by philoso- 

 phers how one group of living beings differed 

 from another group because all its members and 

 all their ancestors came into existence at one 

 stroke when the first-born progenitor of the race, 

 within which all the rest were folded up, stood 

 forth as the result of the creative act. We may 

 fancy him listening to a debate between the 

 philosopher who maintained that all the fossils 

 strewn in the earth were the remains of animals 

 or plants churned up in the turmoil of a violent 

 universal flood, and dropped in their places as 

 the waters went away, and him who argued that 

 such were not really the 'spoils of living crea- 

 tures,' but the product of some playful plastic 

 power which out of the superabundance of its 

 energy fashioned here and there the lifeless earth 

 into forms which imitated, but only imitated, 

 those of living things. Could he amid such sur- 

 roundings by any flight of genius have beat his 

 way to the conception for which his name will 

 ever be known?" This portion of his address 

 concluded with: "I am content to have pointed 

 out that the two great sciences of chemistry and 

 geology took their birth, or at least began to 

 stand alone, at the close of the last century, and 

 have grown to be what we know them now with- 

 in about a hundred years, and that the study 

 of living beings within the same time has been 

 so transformed as to be to-day wholly different 

 from what it was in 1799. Not only have the 

 few driven far back round the full circle of natu- 

 ral knowledge the dark clouds of the unknown 

 which wrap us all about, but also the many walk 

 in the zone of light thus increasingly gained. 

 The span between the science of that time and 

 the science of to-day is beyond all question a 

 great stride onward." Of the man of science he 

 said : " He is not creative like the poet or artist, 

 but he is created. His work, however great it be, 

 is not wholly his own; it is in part the outcome 

 of the work of men who have gone before. Again 

 and again a conception which has made a name 

 great has come not so much by the man's own 

 effort as out of the fullness of time. From the 

 mouth of the man of old the idea dropped bar- 

 ren, fruitless; the world was not ready for it, 

 and heeded it not; the concomitant and abutting 

 truths which could give it power to work were 

 wanting. Coming back again in later days, the 

 same idea found the world awaiting it; things 



