250m ANNIVERSARY 9 



centres of growing activity. While it is a proud satisfaction to 

 receive among our guests to-day leaders in science whose names 

 have become honoured household words in all parts of the globe, 

 the gratification is not less to find, among your number, scholars 

 who represent the older literary learning, who have been deputed 

 to convey to us the congratulations of the time-honoured Univer- 

 sities which they adorn. To one and all we return our grateful 

 thanks for your presence here at our Celebration. We sincerely 

 desire that the few festal days which you are to spend with us 

 may be in every way enjoyable to you, so that your impressions 

 of your visit to London on this occasion may become a pleasant 

 memory which you will care to cherish in the days to come. 



' Two hundred and fifty years seem in some respects no long 

 span of time in the course of human history, but the two hundred 

 and fifty years across which we look back to-day have been in the 

 history of science a period of momentous importance, crowded 

 with incident, and full of marvellous achievement. When in 

 the earlier decades of the seventeenth century Francis Bacon was 

 so cogently insisting on the necessity of studying Nature by the 

 careful observation of facts and the testing of conclusions by 

 experiment, he made but slight practical impression in England. 

 The seed which he sowed did not spring into life until after he 

 had passed away. About the middle of the century, however, the 

 spirit of eager curiosity and inquiry with regard to the world 

 wherein we live, which spread over all civilized countries, reached 

 England also. Nature was still, as it had been from the earliest 

 days of mankind, a vast unknown region, full on every hand of 

 mystery and wonder. Even the most everyday phenomena 

 presented to thoughtful minds problems for which no satisfactory 

 solution had been found. The earnest desire to seek an explana- 

 tion of some of these familiar phenomena at last induced a re- 

 markable group of men in this country to organize themselves 

 systematically for the prosecution of that experimental philosophy 

 which Bacon had so longed to see pursued. The time, however, 

 was not propitious, for it was one of political turmoil and civil war 

 in England. The studious men who desired to pursue these 

 researches sought refuge from the social strife in the quiet 

 investigation of Nature. They met weekly in London, where they 



