PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, B.A. 1871. 16 1 



the closeness of the agreement between that velocity 

 and the velocity of light. This leads me to remark 

 how much science, even in its most lofty specula- 

 tions, gains in return for benefits conferred by its 

 application to promote the social and material 

 welfare of man. Those who perilled and lost their 

 money in the original Atlantic Telegraph were 

 impelled and supported by a sense of the grandeur 

 of their enterprise, and of the world-wide benefits 

 which must flow from its success ; they were at 

 the same time not unmoved by the beauty of the 

 scientific problem directly presented to them ; but 

 they little thought that it was to be immediately, 

 through their work, that the scientific world was to be 

 instructed in a long-neglected and discredited funda- 

 mental electric discovery of Faraday's, or that, again, 

 when the assistance of the British Association was 

 invoked to supply their electricians with methods for 

 absolute measurement (which they found necessary 

 to secure the best economical return for their 

 expenditure, and to obviate and detect those faults 

 in their electric material which had led to disaster), 

 they were laying the foundation for accurate 

 VOL. II M 



