PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, S.T.E., 1874. 211 



of England. Then people in good health will not 

 be stupefied by a few hours of an evening at home 

 in gaslight, or of a social reunion, or by one hour 

 of a crowded popular lecture or meeting of a 

 learned society. Then in our hotels, and dwelling- 

 houses, and clubs, we shall escape the negatively 

 refreshing influence of the all-pervading daily 

 aerial telegraph, which prematurely transmits 

 intelligence of distant and future dinners. The 

 problem of giving us within doors any prescribed 

 degree of temperature, with air as fresh and pure 

 as the atmosphere outside the house can supply, 

 may be not an easy problem ; but it is certainly 

 a problem to be solved when architecture becomes 

 a branch of scientific engineering. 



Now as to the relations between theory and 

 practice in telegraphic engineering, I feel that I 

 have more to say respecting the reflected benefits 

 which electrical science gains from its practical 

 applications in the electric telegraph than of the 

 value of theory in directing, and aiding, and inter- 

 esting the operators in every department of the 

 \vork of the electric telegraph. In no other branch 



P 2 



