1^.6 



NA rURE 



\_Dec. 6, 1 88^ 



comet desci-ibed an orbital arc of more than 340°. The ellipse 

 deduced by Kreutz from observations to November 14 assigns a 

 period of S43 years ; that by Fabritius, from observations to 

 March 3, one of 823 years ; but we may soon hope to see 

 the result of a definitive discussion of the whole series of 

 observations. 



THE ANNIVERSARY MEETING OF THE 

 ROYAL SOCIETY 



T'HE Anniversary Meeting of the Royal Society took place as 

 ■^ usual on St. Andrew's Day, November 30. when the 

 President, Prof. Huxley, delivered his address ; after which the 

 Fellows elected the officers of the Society for the year, whose 

 names we have already given in Nature, Nov. 8, p. 43. 

 The following is Prof. Huxley's address : — 



It will Ije as much in con-onance with your feelings as it is 

 with my o\\n that the first sentences of this address should 

 give utterance to our sense of the calamity which befell us during 

 the recess. 



On June 27 our honoured and loved President, William 

 Spottiswoode, fell a victim to that cruel malady, typhoid fever, 

 which is at once the scourge and the reproach of modern civilisa- 

 tion ; and we were bereaved of a chief of whom all those ^^ho 

 had the highest interests of this Society at heart hoped that he 

 would continue for many a year to discharge the responsible and 

 laborious duties of hi-i office with that broad intelligence, that 

 faithful ddigence, that inexhaustible patience and courtesy, 

 which were so characteristic of the man. 



Every one of the Fellows of the Society in whose hearing I 

 speak knows that these are no words of conventional eulogy, as 

 of a customary epitaph. But it is only those of us who worked 

 with our late President in the Council, or as officers of the 

 Society, who are in a position fully to appreciate his singular 

 capacity for the transaction of buiness with clear judgment and 

 rapid decision, and yet with the most conscientious consideration 

 of the views of those with whom he was associated. 



And I may add that it is only those who enjoyed Mr. Spottis- 

 woode's intimate friendship, as it was my privilege to do for 

 some quarter of a century, who can know how much was lost 

 when there vanished from among us that rare personality, so 

 commingled of delicate sensitiveness with marvellous self-control, 

 of rigid principle with genial tolerance, of energetic practical 

 activity with untiring benevolence, that it ahvays seemed to me 

 the embodiment of that exquisite ideal of a true ientleman 

 which Geoffi-y Chaucer drew five hundred years ago : — 



And though that he was worthy he was wys, 



And of his port as itieke as is a niayde. 



He never yit no vil inye ne sayde 



In al his lyf unto no mauer wiglit. 



He was a verray perfightgentil knight." 



It is not for me to pass any judgment upon Mr. Spottiswoode's 

 scientific labours ; but I have the best authority for saying that 

 having occupied himself with many branches of mathematics, 

 more especially with the higher algebra, including the theory of 

 determinants, \\ ith the general calculus of symbols, and with the 

 application of analysis to geometry and mechanics, he did excel- 

 lent and durable work in all ; and that, in virtue of his sound 

 and \vide culture, his deep penetration, and the singular elegance 

 with which he habitually treated all his subjects, he occupied a 

 place in the front rank of English mathematicians. 



The interment in Westminster Alibey of one who, though 

 compelled to devote a large share of his time to business, was a 

 born man of science, and had won himself so high a place among 

 mathematicians, was doubtless grateful to us as men of science ; 

 it could not but be satisfactory to us as Fellows of the Royal 

 Society that, on the rare occasion of the death of our President 

 in office, the general public should show its sympathy with our 

 bereavement ; yet as men I think it is good to regard those 

 solemn and pathetic obsequies as the tribute which even our busy, 

 careless, cynical, modern world spontaneously pays to such worth 

 and wisdom, to such large humanity and unspotted purity as 

 were manifested in the "very perfect gentle kuight " who so 

 well represented the chivalry of science. 



The total number of Fellows deceased during the past year 

 amounts to twenty ; a large inroad upon our ranks in mere 



numbers, an exceptionally severe mortality if we consider the 

 scientific rank of uany names in the death-roll. Almost at the 

 same time with Mr. Spottiswoode's untimely death we lost, at 

 the ripe old age of ninety, a very distinguished Fellow and 

 former President of this Society, Sir Edward Sabine. It is 

 said that the aver.age age of Fellows of the Royal Society is 

 greater than that of any body of men in Europe ; and it is cer- 

 tainly a remarkable fact that one who so long presided over us 

 in this generation should, as a man of thirty years, have been 

 the contemporary of .Sir Joseph Banks, who became our 

 Pre-ident more than a century ago. And nothing can give a 

 more striking exemplification of the gigantic progress of physical 

 science in modern times than the fact that the discovery of 

 oxygen by Priestley, and that of the composition of water by 

 Cavendish, fall within the period of Sir Joseph Banks's pre- 

 sidency, while Black's work was but a score years earlier. We 

 are as it were but two Presidents off the budding of modern 

 chemistry, as of many another stately growth of the tree of 

 natural knowledge. 



Sir Edward Sabine's long services to this Society, first as 

 Treasurer and then as President, deserve more than a passing 

 allusion ; but for a due appreciation of them, no less than of his 

 great labours in terrestrial magnetism, I must refer you to cur 

 obituary notices. 



By the unexpected death of Prof. Henry John Ste|)hen Smith 

 the University of Oxford lost one of the most distinguished, as 

 he was one of the most influential, among those who have guided 

 its destinies during this generation, and a capacity of the first 

 order, not yet weakened by the touch of time, has disappeared 

 from the ranks of the foremost mathematicians of Europe. 



As Chairman of the Meteorological Committee, Prof. Smith 

 rendered invaluable services to that body ; and w e have all a 

 grateful recollection of the readiness with which his knowledge 

 and sagacity were brought to our aid in Council and in 

 Committee. 



For the rest, I dare add nothing to that which has been said 

 of him by our late President in that just and loving appreciation 

 of his friend, which is now touched with a sadder gravity and a 

 deeper pathos. 



It is difficult to say of Prof. Smith whether he was more re- 

 markable as a man of affairs, of society, of letters, or of science; 

 but it is certain that the scientific facet 'if his brilliant intelli- 

 gence was altogether directed towards those intelligible forms 

 which people the most ethereal regions of abstract knowledge. 

 In Sir William Siemens, who but the other day was suddenly 

 snatched from among us, we had a no less marked exa-nple of 

 vast energy, large scientific acquirements, and intellectual powers 

 of a high order, no less completely devoted, in the main, to the 

 application of science to industry. 



I believe I am expressing the opinion of those most competent 

 to judge, when I say that Sir William Siemens had no supetior 

 in fertility and ingenuity of invention ; that hardly any living 

 man so thoroughly combined an extensive knowledge of scien- 

 tific principles with the power of applying them in a commer- 

 cially successful manner ; and that the value of his numer.-.us 

 inventi nis must be measured, not merely by the extent to which 

 they have increased the wealth and convenience of mankind, but 

 by the favourable reaction on the progress of pure science which 

 they, like all such inventions, have exerted, and will continually 

 exert. 



Time permits me to be Ijut brief in alluding to the remainder 

 of our long list of deaths. But I may not omit to mention that 

 we have lost a distinguished mathematician in Prof. Challis ; in 

 Mr. James Young, a chemist whose skilf al application of theory 

 to practice founded a new industry ; in Mr. Cromwell Varley, an 

 ingenious inventor ; in Lord Talbot de Malahide, a warm friend 

 of science and a zealous promoter of archaeohigical research ; in 

 Mr. Walker, an eminent engineer ; in Mr. Howard, an eminent 

 quinologist ; and in the Rev. Dr. Stebbing, an accomplished and 

 amiable man of letters, who for very many years filled the honour- 

 able, but not very onerous, offii;e of Chaplain to the Society. 



And it would ill become us, intimately connected as this 

 Society always has been, and I hope always will be, with the 

 sciences upon which medicine bases itself, to leave unnoticed the 

 decease of the very type of a philosophical physician, the 

 venerable Sir Thomas Watson. 



Two well-known names have disappeared from among those 

 of the eminent men who are enrolled upon our foreign list ; the 

 eminent physicist. Plateau, and the no less distinguisheii ana- 

 tomist and embryi logi.t, Bischolt. 



