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ADDRESS 



BY 



Profj':ssou E. liAY LANKESTER, 



M.A., LL.D., D.Sc, F.R.S., F.L.S., Director of the Natural History 

 Departments of the British Museums, 



PRESIDENT, 



My Lords, Ladiks, and Gextlkmen, — It is, first of all, my privilege to 

 tliank you for the distinguished honour yuu liave done nie in electiu 

 me President of this great scientific Association — an honour which is 

 enhanced by the fact that our meeting this year is once more held in the 

 venerable city of York, in which seventy-five years ago the British 

 Association for the Advancement of Science held its first meetinsr. 



It is a great pleasure to me to convey to the Lord Mayor and the 

 dignitaries and citizens of York your hearty thanks for the invitation to 

 meet this year in their city. It seems to have become a custom that the 

 Association should be invited at regular intervals to assemble in the city 

 where it took birth and to note the progress made in the objects for the 

 furtherance of which it was founded. A quarter of a century ago we 

 met here under the presidency of that versatile leader in public affairs- 

 Sir John Lubbock, now Lord Avebury. That occasion was the jubilee — 

 the fiftieth anniversary — of the Association. 



Lord Avebury on that occasion gave as his presidential address a 

 survey of the progress of science during tlie fifty years of the Association's 

 existence. He had a wonderful story to tell, and told it with a fulness 

 which was only possible to one of his wide range of knowledo-e 

 and keen interest in the various branches of science. If I venture on 

 the present occasion to say a few words as to the great features in the 

 progress of our knowledge of Nature during the last twenty-fi^ e years 

 it will be readily understood that the mere volume of new knowledge to 

 be surveyed has become so vast that a full and detailed statement such as 

 that which Lord Avebury placed before the Association at its jubilee is 

 no longer possible in a single address delivered from the President's 

 chair. 



Let me ask you before w3 go further to take for a few moments a 

 more personal retrospect and to think of the founders of this Associa- 

 tion, then of the great workers in science who were still alive in 1881 



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