234 LIFE AND EXPERIENCES CHAP. 



In looking back over the list of corresponding members of 

 the British Association, I find myself, much to my surprise, 

 nearly, if not quite, the oldest survivor. 



I recognise, therefore, a certain fitness, on this score, in the 

 call upon me to be the spokesman of those, your brethren 

 from other lands, who have been invited to this auspicious 

 gathering, and to the privilege of listening to the very 

 thoughtful, well-timed, and most instructive address of your 

 President. 



As guests, we desire, Mr. Mayor, heartily to thank the city 

 of Manchester and the officers of the Association for inviting 

 us ; we wish to thank you, Sir Henry, for the gratification 

 your address has afforded us. 



Convened at Manchester, and coming myself by way of 

 Liverpool, I would say personally that there are two names 

 which memory calls up from the distant past with unusual 

 distinctness ; both names familiar to this audience and well 

 known over the world, but which now rise to my mind in a 

 very significant way. For I am old enough to have taken 

 my earliest lessons in chemistry just at the time when the 

 atomic theory of Dalton was propounded, and was taught in 

 the text-books as the latest new thing in science. 



Some years earlier, Washington Irving in his Sketch-book 

 had hallowed to our youthful minds the name of Roscoe, 

 making it the type of all that was liberal, wise, and gracious. 

 And when I came to know something of botany I found that 

 this exemplar, as well as patron, of good learning had by his 

 illustrations of Monadrian plants taken rank among the 

 Patres Conscripti of the botany of that day. 



The name so highly honoured then we now honour in the 

 grandson. And I am confident that I express the sentiments 

 of your foreign guests, whom I represent, when I simply copy 

 the words of your President in 1842, now reproduced in the 

 opening paragraph of the address of the President of 1887, 

 transferring, as we fitly may, the application from the earlier 

 to the later Manchester chemist : " Manchester is still the 

 residence of one whose name is uttered with respect wherever 

 science is cultivated, who is here to-night to enjoy the 

 honours due to a long career of persevering devotion to 

 knowledge." 



I cannot continue the quotation without material change. 

 " That increase of years to him has been but increase of 

 wisdom" may indeed be said of Roscoe no less than of 

 Dalton ; but we are happy to know that we are now con- 

 templating, not the diminished strength of the close, but the 



