4 PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 
The eminence of my predecessors in the chair at the meetings of the 
British Association in Canada makes my task this evening a difficult 
one. The meeting at Montreal was presided over by Lord Rayleigh, 
who, like Lord Kelvin, his colleague in the chair of Section A at that 
meeting, has left the lion’s mark on every department of physics, 
and who has shown that, vast as is the empire of physics, there are 
still men who can extend its frontiers in all of the many regions under 
its sway. It has been my lot to succeed Lord Rayleigh in other offices 
as well as this, and I know how difficult a man he is to follow. 
The President of the second meeting in Canada—that held in 1897 
at Toronto—was Sir John Evans, one of those men who, like Boyle, 
Cavendish, Darwin, Joule, Spottiswoode, and Huggins, have, from 
their own resources and without the aid derived from official positions 
or from the universities, made memorable contributions to science: 
such men form one of the characteristic features of British science. 
May we not hope that, as the knowledge of science and the interest 
taken in it increase, more of the large number of men of independent 
means in our country may be found working for the advancement of 
science, and thereby rendering services to the community no less 
valuable than the political, philanthropic, and social work at which 
many of them labour with so much zeal and Success? 
I can, however, claim to have some experience of at any rate one 
branch of Canadian science, for it has been my privilege to receive at 
the Cavendish Laboratory many students from your universities. 
Some of these have been holders of what are known as the 1851 scholar- 
ships. These scholarships are provided from the surplus of the Great 
Exhibition of 1851, and are placed at the disposal of most of the 
younger universities in the British Empire, to enable students to devote 
themselves for two or three years to original research in various branches 
of science. I have had many opportunities of seeing the work of these 
scholars, and I should like to put on record my opinion that there is no 
educational endowment in the country which has done or is doing 
better work. 
I have had, as I said, the privilege of having as pupils students 
from your universities as well as from those of New Zealand, Australia, 
and the United States, and have thus had opportunities of comparing 
the effect on the best men of the educational system in force at your 
universities with that which prevails in the older English universities. 
Well, as the result, I have come to the conclusion that there is a good 
deal in the latter system which you have been wise not to imitate. The 
chief evil from which we at Cambridge suffer and which you have 
avoided is, I am convinced, the excessive competition for scholarships 
which confronts our students at almost every stage of their education. 
You may form some estimate of the prevalence of these scholarships 
if I tell you that the colleges in the University of Cambridge alone give 
