I 



ADDEESS 



BY 



SIE DOUGLAS GALTON, KC.B., D.C.L., F.E.S. 



PRESIDENT. 



My first duty is to convey to you, JMr. Mayor, and to the inhabitants of 

 Ipswich, the thanks of the British Association for your hospitable invita- 

 tion to hold our sixty-fifth meeting in your ancient town, and thus to recall 

 the agreeable memories of the similar favour Avhich your predecessors con- 

 ferred on the Association forty-four years ago. 



In the next place I feel it my duty to say a few words on the 

 great loss which science has recently sustained — the death of the Hight 

 Hon. Thomas Henry Huxley. It is unnecessary for me to enlarge, 

 in the presence of so many to whom his personality was known, upon 

 his charm in social and domestic life ; but upon the debt which the 

 Association owes to him for the assistance which he rendered in the 

 promotion of science I cannot well be silent. Huxley was preeminently 

 qualified to assist in sweeping away the obstruction by dogmatic au- 

 thority, which in the early days of the Association fettered progress in 

 certain branches of science. For, whilst he was an eminent leader in 

 biological research, his intellectual power, his original and intrepid mind, 

 his vigorous and masculine English, made him a writer who explained the 

 deepest subject with transparent clearness. And as a speaker his lucid 

 and forcible style was adorned with ample and effective illustration in the 

 lecture-room ; and his energy and wealth of argument in a more public 

 arena largely helped to win the battle of evolution, and to secure for us 

 the right to discuss questions of religion and science without fear and 

 without favour. 



It may, I think, interest you to learn that Huxley first made the 



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