ADDRESS. 9 



each during the current year. But, as the various Sciences have demanded 

 more and more special treatment on the part of those who seriously pursue 

 them, so have the cases of individuals who can of their own knowledge 

 give anything approaching to a general review become more and more 

 rare. To this may be added the fact that although no year is so barren 

 as to fail in affording sufficient crop for a strictly scientific budget, or for 

 a detailed report of progress in research, yet one year is more fertile than 

 another in growths of sufficient prominence to arrest the attention of the 

 general public, and to supply topics suitable for the address. On these 

 accounts apparently such a Presidential survey has ceased to be annual, 

 and has dropped into an intermittence of longer period. Some Presi- 

 dents have made a scientific principle, such as the Time-element in natural 

 phenomena, or Continuity, or Natural Selection, the theme of their dis- 

 course, and have gathered illustrations from various branches of know- 

 ledge. Others again, taking their own special subject as a fundamental 

 note, and thence modulating into other kindred keys, have borne testi- 

 mony to the fact that no subject is so special as to be devoid of bearing 

 or of influence on many others. Some have described the successive stages 

 of even a single but important investigation ; and while tracing the growth 

 of that particular item, and of the ideas involved in it, have incidentally 

 shown to the outer world what manner of business a serious investigation 

 is. But there is happily no pattern or precedent which the President 

 is bound to follow ; both in range of subject-matter and in mode of treat- 

 ment each has exercised his undoubted right of taking an independent 

 line. And it can hardly be doubted that a judicious exercise of this free- 

 dom has contributed more than anything else to sustain the interest of a 

 series of annual discourses extending now over nearly half a century . 



The nature of the subjects which may fairly come within the scope of 

 such a discourse has of late been much discussed ; and the question is one 

 upon which everyone of course is entitled to form his own judgment ; but 

 lest there should be any misapprehension as to how far it concerns us in our 

 corporate capacity, it will be well to remind my hearers that as, on the one 

 hand, there is no discussion on the Presidential address, and the members 

 as a body express no formal opinion upon it, so, on the other, the Association 

 cannot fairly be considered as in any way committed to its tenour or con- 

 clusions. Whether this immunity from comment and reply be really on 

 the whole so advantageous to the President as might be supposed need 

 not here be discussed ; but suffice it to say, that the case of an audience 

 assembled to listen without discussion finds a parallel elsewhere, and in 

 the parallel case it is not generally considered that the result is altogether 

 either advantageous to the speaker or conducive to excellence in the 

 discourse. 



But, apart from this, the question of a limitation of range in the 

 subject-matter for the Presidential address is not quite so simple as may 

 at first sight appear. It must, in fact, be borne in mind that, while on 



