President's Address. 203 



strength of the proverb which says, "As iron sharpeneth iron, 

 so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend," the 

 association is both a pleasant and useful reunion of philoso- 

 phers in this sense. The presidential addresses are sometimes 

 supposed to be a little heretical, and stir up the wrath of our 

 clerical friends, but these gentlemen after a while mostly 

 calm down and their anger ceaseth, simply because most 

 frequently they find that they have been more frightened 

 than hurt. These addresses are in general masterly discourses, 

 and are looked forward to by the scientific public with much 

 interest. Besides the papers which are read in the sections, 

 interesting reports on scientific subjects are brought up 

 annually by committees appointed in the previous year. 

 Many of these reports are exceedingly valuable. But another, 

 and the last but not least, useful feature of the association I 

 shall mention is, that it dispenses a great deal of money for 

 the prosecution of important scientific investigations which 

 otherwise could not be accomplished for want of private means. 



The great societies, such as the Eoyal, the Linnean, the 

 Geological, Geographical, Botanical, Chemical, and Zoological, 

 and some other societies, are all great aids in their way to the 

 promotion and furtherance of science in its advanced stages, 

 as their Transactions abundantly testify. 



I should have liked, had time permitted, to have made 

 reference to some of the prevalent speculative doctrines of the 

 day in relation to matter, and more particularly in regard to 

 two of them now in great vogue, viz., the Conseevation of 

 Energy and the so-called law of Continuity, but, as it is, I 

 must forego my wish. 



A word or two should also be said on the doctrine of Evolu- 

 tion, and which is so much the subject of discussion at the 

 present day. It is simply a revival of the doctrine of Descartes, 

 broached by him in the seventeenth century, afterwards sup- 

 ported by Buffon, De Maillet, and notably by Lamarck. With the 

 exception of these writers the subject had dropped out of sight 

 for nearly two hundred years, when the world was surprised in 

 1851 by its re-introduction by the author of the "Vestiges of 

 Creation." Latterly Dr Darwin has been the great apostle of 

 the doctrine. I am not a convert to Evolution, nor yet to the 



