474 Presidentship of Lord Lister 1898 



1903, when he was appointed Director of Naval Education. 

 This important office he resigned in the summer of 1916 to 

 become Principal and Vice-Chancellor of his Alma Mater, 

 the University of Edinburgh. He became F.R.S. in 1887 

 and was created K.C.B. in 1911. 



Professor Miers, Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, 

 spent some years on the staff of the mineralogical department 

 of the British Museum. In 1898 he was appointed Wayn- 

 flete Professor of Mineralogy at Oxford, and held this chair 

 till in 1908 he was chosen Principal of the University of 

 London. He is now Vice-Chancellor of the University of 

 Manchester. He was elected F.R.S. in 1896 and knighted 

 in 1912. 



A few foreigners of note dined with the Club in the course 

 of the year. On January 27th General Ferrero, Italian 

 Ambassador, was entertained. On June 9 Professor Frank- 

 land introduced Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleeff. This illus- 

 trious Russian chemist was the seventeenth and youngest 

 child of his father, Director of the Gymnasium at Tobolsk 

 in Siberia. After finishing his education at St. Petersburg 

 he became privat-docent at the University there, and in 

 1866 was appointed Professor of General Chemistry. His 

 name is above all connected with the great Periodic Law 

 in Chemistry which he formulated, but there is hardly any 

 department of chemistry which has not been enriched by 

 his researches. He extended his enquiries also into the 

 mineralogical and geological domain. He was much 

 interested in the origin of petroleum, and was sent by his 

 Government to report on the working of the oil wells at 

 Baku and in Pennsylvania. It was then a prevalent opinion 

 that the petroleum which comes to the surface at these 

 and other places arises from the decomposition of organic 

 remains in the rocks below. Rejecting this explanation 

 Mendeleeff showed that the production of mineral oil could 

 be accounted for on the supposition that in the interior of 

 the globe there is much metal, especially iron, in an intensely 

 heated condition, and that this material contains carbon 

 in solution. He held that water gaining access to such 



