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results would have accrued to this country! We should not 
now be painfully groping in the dark after a system of national 
education. We should not be wasting money, and time more 
valuable. than money, in building imitations of foreign edu- 
cational superstructures before having put in solid foundations. 
We should not be hurriedly and distractedly casting about for a 
system of tactics after confrontation with the disciplined and co- 
ordinated forces of industry and science led and directed by the 
rulers of powerful States. Forty-thrée years ago we should 
have started fair had the Prince Consort’s views prevailed. As 
it is, we have lost ground which it will tax even this nation’s 
splendid reserves of individual initiative to recover. Although 
in this country the king rules, but does not govern, the Con- 
stitution and the structure of English society assure to him a very 
potent and far-reaching influence upon those who do govern. It is 
hardly possible to overrate the benefits that may accrue from his 
intelligent and continuous interest in the great problem of trans- 
forming his people into a scientifically educated nation. From 
this point of view we may congratulate ourselves that the heir 
to the Crown, following his family traditions, has already deduced 
from his own observations in different parts of the empire some 
very sound and valuable conclusions as to the national needs at 
the present day. 
Griffith— Gilbert—Cornu. 
The saddest yet the most sacred duty falling to us on such 
an occasion as the present is to pay our tribute to the memory 
of old comrades and fellow-workers whom we shall meet no 
more. We miss to-day a figure that has been familiar, 
conspicuous, and always congenial at the meetings of the 
British Association during the last forty years. Throughout the 
greater part of that period Mr. George Griffith discharged the 
onerous and often delicate duties of the assistant general secre- 
tary, not only with conscientious thoroughness and great ability, 
but also with urbanity, tact and courtesy that endeared him to 
all. His years sat lightly upon him, and his undiminished 
alertness and vigour caused his sudden death to come upon us 
all with a shock of surprise as wellas of pain and grief. The 
British Association owes him a debt of gratitude which must be 
so fully realised by every regular attender of our meetings that 
no poor words of mine are needed to quicken your sense of 
loss, or toadd to the poignancy of your regret. 
The British Association has to deplore the loss from among 
us of Sir Joseph Gilbert, a veteran who continued to the end 
of a long life to pursue his important and beneficent researches 
with untiring energy. The length of his services in the cause 
of science cannot be better indicated than by recalling the fact 
that he was one of the six past Presidents boasting fifty years’ 
membership whose jubilee was celebrated by the Chemical 
Society in 1898. He was in fact an active member of that 
Society for over sixty years. Early in his career he devoted 
himself to a most important but at that time little cultivated 
field of research. He strove with conspicuous success to place 
the oldest of industries on a scientific basis, and to submit the 
complex conditions of agriculture to a systematic analysis. He 
studied the physiology of plant life in the open air, not with the 
object of penetrating the secrets of structure, but with the more 
directly utilitarian aim of establishing the conditions of suc- 
cessful and profitable cultivation. By a long series of experi- 
ments, alike well conceived and laboriously carried out, he 
determined the effects of variation in soil, and its chemical 
treatment—in short, in all the unknown factors with which the 
farmer previously had to deal according to empirical and local 
rules, roughly deduced from undigested experience by uncritical 
and rudimentary processes of inference. Gilbert had the faith, 
the insight and the courage to devote his life to an investigation 
so difficult, so unpromising, and so unlikely to bring the 
rich rewards attainable by equal diligence in other directions, as 
to offer no attraction to the majority of men. The tabulated 
results of the Rothamsted experiments remain as a benefaction 
to mankind and a monument of indomitable and disinterested 
perseverance. 
It is impossible for me in this place to offer more than the 
barest indication of the great place in contemporary science that 
has been vacated by the lamented death of Prof. Alfred Cornu, 
who so worthily upheld the best traditions of scientific France. 
He was gifted ina high degree with the intellectual lucidity, 
the mastery of form and the perspicuous method which charac- 
terise the best exponents of French thought in all departments of 
study. After a brilliant career asa student, he was chosen at 
NO. 1715, VOL. 66] 
the early age of twenty-six to fill one of the enviable positions 
more numerous in Paris than in London, the Professorship of 
Physics at the Ecole Polytechnique. In that post, which he 
occupied to the end of his life, he found what is probably the 
ideal combination for a man of science—leisure and material 
equipment for original research, together with that close and 
stimulating contact with practical affairs afforded by his duties 
as teacher in a great school, almost ranking as a department of 
State. Cornu was admirable alike in the use he made of his 
opportunities and in his manner of discharging his duties. He 
was at once a great investigator and a great teacher. I shall 
not even attempt a summary, which at the best must be very 
imperfect, of his brilliant achievements in optics, the study of 
his predilection, in electricity, in acoustics and in the field of 
physics generally. Asa proof of the great estimation in which 
he was held, it is sufficient to remind you that he had filled the 
highest presidential offices in French scientific societies, and that 
he was a foreign member of our Royal Society and a recipient 
of its Rumford medal. In this country he had many friends, 
attracted no less by his personal and social qualities than by his 
commanding abilities. Some of those here present may re- 
member his appearance a few years ago at the Royal Institution, 
and more recently his delivery of the Rede Lecture at Cambridge, 
when the University conferred upon him the honorary degree of 
Doctor of Science. His death has inflicted a heavy blow upon 
our generation, upon France and upon the world. 
The Progress of Belfast. 
A great man has observed that the ‘‘ intelligent anticipation 
of events before they occur” is a factor of some importance in 
human affairs. One may suppose that intelligent anticipation 
had something to do with the choice of Belfast as the meeting- 
place of the British Association this year. Or, if it had not, 
then it must be admitted that circumstances have conspired, as 
they occasionally do, to render the actual selection peculiarly 
felicitous. Belfast has perennial claims, of a kind that cannot 
easily be surpassed, to be the scene of a great scientific gather- 
ing—claims founded upon its scientific traditions and upon the 
conspicuous energy and success with which its citizens have 
prosecuted in various directions the application of science to the 
purposes of life. It is but the other day that the whole nation 
deplored at the grave of Lord Dufferin the loss of one of the 
most distinguished and most versatile public servants of the age. 
That great statesman and near neighbour of Belfast was a typical 
expression of the qualities and the spirit which have made 
Belfast what it is, and have enabled Ireland, in spite of all draw- 
backs, to playa great part inthe Empire. I look round on your 
thriving and progressive city giving evidence of an enormous 
aggregate of industrial efforts intelligently organised and directed 
for the building up of asound social fabric. I find that your great 
industries are interlinked and interwoven with the whole economic 
framework of the Empire, and that you are silently and irresistibly 
compelled to harmonious cooperation by practical considerations 
acting upon the whole community. It is here that I look for 
the real Ireland, the Ireland of the future. We cannot trace 
with precision the laws that govern the appearance of eminent 
men, but we may at least learn from history that they do not 
spring from every soil. They do not appear among decadent 
races or in ages of retrogression. They are the fine flower of 
the practical intellect of the nation working studiously and 
patiently in accordance with the great laws of conduct. In the 
manifold activities of Belfast we have a splendid manifestation 
of individual energy working neoessarily, even if not altogether 
consciously, for the national good. In great Irishmen like 
Lord Dufferin and Lord Roberts, giving their best energies for 
the defence of the nation by diplomacy or by war, we have 
complementary evidence enough to reassure the most timid 
concerning the real direction of Irish energies and the vital 
nature of Irish solidarity with the rest of the Empire. 
Belfast has played a prominent part in a transaction of a 
somewhat special and significant kind, which has proved not a 
little confusing and startling to the easy-going public. The 
significance of the shipping combination lies in the light it 
throws on the conditions and tendencies which make such 
things possible, if not even inevitable. It is an event forcibly 
illustrating the declaration of His Royal Highness the Prince 
of Wales, that the nation must ‘‘ wake up” if it hopes to face 
its growing responsibilities. Belfast. may plead with some 
justice that it, at least, has never gone tosleep. In various 
directions an immense advance has been effected during the 
