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TEANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 



Section A.— MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 



Pkesident of the Section— Dr, Joseph Larsioe, F.R.S. 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 6. 



The President delivered the following Address: — 



It is fitting that before entering upon the business of the Section we should pause 

 to take note of the losses which our department of science has recently sustained. 

 The fame of Bertrand, apart from his official position as Secretary of the French 

 Academy of Sciences, was long ago universally established by his classical treatise 

 on the Infinitesimal Calculus : it has been of late years sustained by the luminous 

 exposition and searching criticism of his books on the Theory of Probability and 

 Thermodynamics and Electricity. The debt which we owe to that other veteran, 

 G. "Wiedemann, both on account of his own researches, which take us back to the 

 modern revival of experimental physics, and for his great and indispensable 

 thesaurus of the science of electricity, cannot easily be overstated. By the death 

 of Sophus Lie, following soon after his return to a chair in his native, 

 country Norway, we have lost one of the great constructive mathematicians of the 

 century, who has in various directions fundamentally expanded the methods and 

 conceptions of analysis by reverting to the fountain of direct geometrical intuition. 

 In Italy the death of Beltrami has removed an investigator whose influence has 

 been equally marked on the theories of transcendental geometry and on the pro- 

 gress of mathematical physics. In our own country we have lost in D. E. Hughes 

 one of the great scientific inventors of the age ; while we specially deplore the 

 removal, in his early prime, of one who has recently been well known at these 

 meetings, Thomas Preston, whose experimental investigations on the relations 

 between magnetism and light, combined with his great powers of lucid exposition, 

 marked out for him a brilliant future. 



Perhaps the most important event of general scientific interest during the past 

 year has been the definite undertaking of the great task of the international 

 coordination of scientific literature; and it maybe in some measure in the pro- 

 longed conferences that were necessitated by that object that the recently 

 announced international federation of scientific academies has had its origin. lu 

 the important task of rendering accessible the stores of scientific knowledge, the 

 British Association, and in particular this Section of it, has played the part of 

 pioneer. Our annual volumes have long been classical, through the splendid 

 reports of the progress of the difierent branches of knowledge that have been from 

 time to time contributed to them by the foremost British men of science ; and our 

 work in this direction has received the compliment of successful imitation by the 

 sister Associations on the Continent. 



Tbe usuaj conferpncea ppnnected with pur department of scientific activity hava 



