4 REPOKT — 1902. 



of the lot of the healthy than with the relief of the sick. Heredity 

 imposes obligations and also confers aptitude for their discharge. If 

 His Majesty's royal mother throughout her long and beneficent reign 

 set him a splendid example of devotion to the burdensome labours of 

 State which must necessarily absorb the chief part of his energies, 

 his father no less clearly indicated the great part he may play in 

 the encouragement of science. Intelligent appreciation of scientific 

 work and needs is not less but more necessary in the highest quarters 

 to-day than it was forty-three years ago, when His Royal Highness 

 the Prince Consort brought the matter before this Association in 

 the following memorable passage in his Presidential Address : 'We 

 may be justified, however, in hoping that by the gradual diffusion of 

 science and its increasing recognition as a principal part of our national 

 education, the public in general, no less than the legislature and the 

 State, will more and more recognise the claims of science to their atten- 

 tion ; so that it may no longer require the begging box, but speak to the 

 State like a favoured child to its parent, sure of his paternal solicitude 

 for its welfare ; that the State will recognise in science one of its 

 elements of strength and prosperity, to protect which the clearest dictates 

 of self-interest demand.' Had this advice been seriously taken to heart 

 and acted upon by the rulers of the nation at the time, what splendid 

 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 educational 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 dis- 

 ciplined and co-ordinated forces of industry and science led and directed 

 by the rulers of powerful States. Forty -three 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 Constitution 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 transforming 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 — Abel. 



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 



