president's address. 



Sir Rubert Boyce, called away at a comparatively early age in the 

 middle of his work, was for long a colleague of mine at University 

 College, and was one of the staff of the Eoyal Commission on Sewage 

 Disposal. The service he rendered science in combating tropical 

 diseases is well known. 



Sir Francis Galton died at the beginning of the year, at the advanced 

 age of 89. His influence on science has been characterised by 

 Professor Karl Pearson in his having maintained the idea that exact 

 quantitative methods could — nay, must — be applied to many branches 

 of science which had been held to be beyond the field of either mathe- 

 matical or physical treatment. Sir Francis was General Secretary of 

 this Association from 1863 to 1868; he was President of Section E 

 in 1862, and again in 1872; he was President of Section H in 1885; 

 but, although often asked to accept the office of President of the Asso- 

 ciation, his consent could never be obtained. Galton 's name will 

 always be associated with that of his friend and relative, Charles 

 Darwin, as one of the most eminent and influential of English men 

 of science. 



Professor Thomas Eupert Jones, also, like Galton, a member of 

 this Association since 1860, and in 1891 President of the Geological 

 Section, died in April last at the advanced age of 91. Like Dr. Beddoe, 

 he was a medical man with wide scientific interests. He became a 

 distinguished geologist, and for many years edited the Quarterly Journal 

 of the Geological Society. 



Professor Story Maskelyne, at one time a diligent frequenter of our 

 meetings, and a member of the Council from 1874 to 1880, was a cele- 

 brated mineralogist and crystallographer. He died at the age of 88. 

 The work which he did in the University of Oxford and at the British 

 Museum is well known. In his later life he entered Parliament. 



Dr. Johnstone Stoney, President of Section A in 1897, died on 

 July 1, in his eighty-sixth year. He was one of the originators of the 

 modern view of the nature of electricity, having given the name ' elec- 

 tron ' to its unit as far back as 1874. His investigations dealt with 

 spectroscopy and allied subjects, and his philosophic mind led him to 

 publish a scheme of ontology which, I venture to think, must be 

 acknowledged to be the most important work which has ever been 

 done on that difficult subject. 



Among our corresponding members we have lost Professor Bohr, 

 of Copenhagen; Professor Bruhl, of Heidelberg; Hofrat Dr. Caro, of 

 Berlin; Professor Fittig, of Strassburg; and Professor Van't Hoff, of 

 Berlin. I cannot omit to mention that veteran of science, Professor 

 Cannizzaro, of Rome, whose work in the middle of last century placed 

 chemical science on the firm basis which it now occupies. 



I knew all these men, some of them intimately ; and, if I have not 



