Vice-President's Address. 399 



branches of study and research. This has in the past marked 

 the whole history of tlie Society. It was here that Simpson 

 and Carpenter, and Edward Forbes and John Goodsir, and 

 Wyville Thomson and Strethill Wright, and others, planted 

 their feet on the first rungs of that ladder on which they 

 climbed so high! And that this feature of our influence 

 and usefulness is as broadly marked at present as it ever 

 was, is beyond all doubt. " There were brave men before 

 Agamemnon," and there have been many since. I could 

 name a goodly band of young workers among our Fellows, 

 even fuller of promise than the distinguished men just 

 named were at a corresponding time in tlieir career, from 

 whom we are entitled to expect much, and from whom 

 already we have got much. Should we not then bestir 

 ourselves, and insist on sharing in any grants made by 

 the State for the encouragement and promotion of Scottish 

 science ? 



Perhaps the interests of Scottish science have suffered 

 from want of united effort on the part of our learned 

 Societies. I have a strong conviction, that if we were to 

 present a united front to the age, we would have far more 

 influence than we have at present with the government of 

 the day, and far more influence also in determining and 

 guiding the zeit geist — the temper of the time — on the side of 

 the interests of science. Were the Eoyal, the Eoyal Physical, 

 the Botanical, the Geological, the Meteorological, and the 

 Eoyal Geographical federated under the designation Scottish 

 Academy of Sciences, the position of cold isolation in 

 which they severally stand to each other would be removed, 

 and united action could readily be taken, whenever the 

 interests of all, or of any one, demanded it. But incorpora- 

 tion would frustrate the ends in view. Thus each would 

 preserve its own funds, elect its own council and president, 

 meet and transact its business under its own council as at 

 present, and let the several councils be the constituency for 

 electing a distinguished man of science, of letters, or of rank, 

 as President of the Academy. 



Now this may all seem little likely at present, but cer- 

 tainly it is not less likely than the fruit of Fleming's sug- 



