740 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



valued. It is pleasant to think that this Association is the means of 

 furthering an object which should be dear to the hearts of all of us ; 

 and I venture to say that a large proportion of the visitors to this 

 country will be astonished by what they see, and will carry home an 

 impression which time will not readily efface. 



To be connected with this meeting is, to me, a great honor, but 

 also a great responsibility. In one respect, especially, I feel that the 

 Association might have done well to choose another president. My 

 own tastes have led me to study mathematics and physics rather than 

 geology and biology, to which naturally more attention turns in a new 

 country, presenting as it does a fresh jBeld for investigation. A chroni- 

 cle of achievements in these departments by workers from among 

 yourselves would have been suitable to the occasion, but could not 

 come from me. If you would have preferred a different subject for 

 this address, I hope, at least, that you will not hold me entirely re- 

 sponsible. 



At annual gatherings like ours the pleasure with which friends 

 meet friends again is sadly marred by the absence of those who can 

 never more take their part in our proceedings. Last year my prede- 

 cessor in this office had to lament the untimely loss of Spottiswoode 

 and Henry Smith, dear friends of many of us, and prominent mem- 

 bers of our Association. And now, again, a well-known form is miss- 

 ing. For many years Sir W. Siemens has been a regular attendant at 

 our meetings, and to few indeed have they been more indebted for 

 success. Whatever the occasion, in his Presidential Address of two 

 years ago, or in communications to the Physical and Mechanical Sec- 

 tions, he had always new and interesting ideas, put forward in lan- 

 guage which a child could understand, so great a master was he 

 of the art of lucid statement in his adopted tongue. Practice with 

 science was his motto. Deeply engaged in industry, and conversant 

 all his life with engineering operations, his opinion was never that of 

 a mere theorist. On the other hand, he abhorred rule of thumb, 

 striving always to master the scientific principles which underlie ra- 

 tional design and invention. 



It is not necessary that I should review in detail the work of Sie- 

 mens. The part which he took, during recent years, in the develop- 

 ment of the dynamo-machine must be known to many of you. We 

 owe to him the practical adoption of the method, first suggested by 

 Wheatstone, of throwing into a shunt the coils of the field-magnets, 

 by which a greatly improved steadiness of action is obtained. The 

 same characteristics are observable throughout — a definite object in 

 view and a well-directed perseverance in overcoming the difficulties 

 by which the path is usually obstructed. 



These are, indeed, the conditions of successful invention. The 

 world knows little of such things, and regards the new machine or 

 the new method as the immediate outcome of a happy idea. Proba- 



