ADDRESS 
BY 
Tue Rieut Hon. A. J. BALFOUR, D.C.L., LL.D., M.P., 
F.R.S., Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh. 
PRESIDENT. 
Reflections suggested is the New 7 Theory of Matter. 
Tue meetings of the British Association have for the most part been held 
in crowded centres of population, where our surroundings never permit us 
to forget, were such forgetfulness in any case possible, how close is the tie 
that binds modern science to modern industry, the abstract researches of 
the student to the labours of the inventor and the mechanic. This, no 
doubt, is as it should be. The interdependence of theory and practice 
cannot be ignored without inflicting injury on both ; and he is but a poor 
friend to either who undervalues their mutual co-operation. 
Yet, after all, since this great Society exists for the advancement of 
Science, it is well that now and again we should choose our place of 
gathering in some spot where science rather than its applications, know- 
ledge, not utility, are the ends to which research is primarily directed. 
If this be so, surely no happier selection could have been made than 
the quiet courts of this ancient University. For here, if anywhere, we 
tread the classic ground of physical discovery. Here, if anywhere, those 
who hold that physics is the true Scientia Scientiarum, the root of all the 
sciences which deal with inanimate nature, should feel themselves at 
home. For, unless I am led astray by too partial an affection for my own 
University, there is nowhere to be found, in any corner of the world, a 
- spot with which have been connected, either by their training in youth, or 
by the labours of their maturer years, so many men eminent as the 
originators of new and fruitful physical conceptions. I say nothing of 
Bacon, the eloquent prophet of a new era ; nor of Darwin, the Copernicus 
of Biology ; for my subject to-day is not the contributions of Cambridge 
to the general growth of scientific knowledge. I am concerned rather 
with the illustrious line of physicists who have learned or taught within 
a few hundred yards of this building—a line stretching from Newton in 
the seventeenth century, through setts in the Bele atte through 
Young, Stokes, Maxwell, in the nineteenth, through Kelvin, who cnbadae 
an epoch in himself, down to Rayleigh, Larmor, J. J, IB gnisses and the 
B2 
