PBESIDENTS ADDBESS. 15 



Wireless telegraphy. — Of great importance lias been the whole 

 progress in the theory and practical handling of electrical phenomena 

 of late years. The discovery of the Hertzian waves and their applica- 

 tion to wireless telegraphy is a feature of this period, though I 

 may remind some of tliose who have been impressed by these dis- 

 coveries that the mere fact of electrical action at a distance is 

 that which hundreds of years ago gave to electricity its name. The power 

 which we have gained of making an instrument oscillate in accordance 

 with a predetermined code of signalling, although detached and a thousand 

 miles distant, does not really lend any new support to the notion that 

 the old-time beliefs of thought-transference and second sight are more 

 than illusions based on incomplete observation and imperfect reasoning. 

 For the important factors in such human intercourse — namely, a signal- 

 ling-instrument and a code of signals — have not been discovered, as yet, 

 in the structure of the human body, and have to be consciously devised 

 and manufactured by man in the only examples of thought-transference 

 over long distances at present discovered or laid bare to experiment and 

 observation. 



Iliyh and low teynjjeralures. — The past quarter of a centuiy has 

 witnessed a great development and application of the methods of pro- 

 ducing both very low and very high temperatures. Sir James Dewar, 

 by improved apparatus, has produced liquid hydrogen and a fall of 

 temperatui'e probably reaching to the absolute zero. A number of 

 applications of extremely low temperatures to research in various directions 

 has been rendered possible by the facility with which they may now be 

 produced. Similarly high temperatures have been employed in con- 

 tinuation of the earlier work of Deville, and others by Moissan, the 

 distinguished French chemist. 



Progress in Chemistry. — In chemistry generally the theoretical tendency 

 guiding a great deal of work has been the completion and verification of the 

 ' periodic law ' of Mendele'eff ; and, on the other hand, the search by physical 

 agents such as light and electricity for evidence as to the arrangement of 

 atoms in the molecules of the most diverse chemical compounds. The study 

 of ' valency ' and its outcome, stereo-chemistry, have been the special lines 

 in which chemistry has advanced. As a matter of course hundreds, if not 

 thousands, of nesv chemical bodies have been produced in the laboratory 

 of greater or less theoretical interest. The discovery of the greatest 

 practical and industrial importance in this connection is the production 

 of indigo by synthetical processes, first by laboratory and then by factory 

 methods, so as to compete successfully with the natural product. Von 

 Baeyer and Heumann are the names associated with this remarkable 

 achievement, which has necessarily dislocated a large industry which 

 derived its raw material from British India. ^ 



' I had at first intended to give in this address a more detailed and technical 

 statement of the progress of science than I have found possible when actually 

 engaged in its preparation. The limits of time and space render any such survey 



