ADDEESS 



BT 



THE MOST HON. THE MAEQUIS OF SALISBUEY, 



K.G., D.C.L., F.R.S., Chancellor of the University of Oxford, 



PRESIDENT. 



My -functions are of a more comjDlicated character than usually is 

 assigned to the occupants of this Chair. As Chancellor of the University 

 it is my duty to tender to the British Association a hearty welcome, which 

 it is my duty as President of the Association to accept. As President of 

 the Association I convey, most unworthily, the voice of English science, 

 as many worthy and illustrious Presidents have done before me ; but in 

 representing the University I represent far more fittingly the learners 

 who are longing to hear the lessons which the fii-st teachers of English 

 science have come as visitors to teach. I am bound to express on behalf 

 of the University our sense of the good feeling towards that body which 

 is the motive of this unusual arrangement. But as far as I am personally 

 concerned, it is attended with some embarrassing results. In presence of 

 the high priests of science I am only a layman, and all the skill of all the 

 chemists the Association contains will not transmute a layman into any 

 more precious kind of metal. Yet it is my hard destiny to have to address 

 on scientific matters probably the most competent scientific audience in 

 the world. If a country gentleman, who was also a colonel of Volun- 

 teers, were by any mental aberration on the part of the Commander-in- 

 Chief to be appointed to review an army corps at Aldershot, all military 

 men would doubtless feel a deep compassion for his inevitable fate. I 

 bespeak some spark of that divine emotion when I am attempting to 

 discharge under similar conditions a scarcely less hopeless duty. At least, 

 however, I have the consolation of feeling that I am free from some of the 

 anxieties which have fallen to those who have preceded me as Presidents 

 in this city. The relations of the Association and the University are 

 those of entire sympathy and good will, as becomes common workers in 

 the sacred cause of difi"using enlightenment and knowledge. But we must 

 admit that it was not always so. A curious record of a very different 



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