4 PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 
C. W. Peach, William Pengelly, Hughes Bennett, John Cleland, John 
Davy, Alexander Christison, Alfred Russel Wallace, Alien Thomson, 
William Turner, George Busk, Michael Foster (not yet founder of the 
Cambridge School of Physiology), Henry Howorth, Sir Roderick 
Murchison, Clements R. Markham, Sir William (afterwards Lord) 
Armstrong, Sir Charles Lyell, and Douglas Galton. Many of those 
enumerated have in the course of nature passed away from us, but not 
a few remain, and we are glad to know that most of these retain their 
ancient vigour in spite of the five-and-forty years which separate us 
from the last meeting in this place. 
For the Address with which it is usual for the President to open 
the proceedings of the annual assembly, the field covered by the aims of 
the British Association provides the widest possible range 
Selection of of material from which to select. One condition alone is 
— prescribed by custom, viz., that the subject chosen shall 
lie within the bounds of those branches of knowledge which 
are dealt with in the Sections. There can be no ground of complaint 
regarding this limitation on the score of variety, for within the forty 
years that I have myself been present (not, I regret to say, without a 
break) at these gatherings, problems relating to the highest mathe- 
matics on the one hand, and to the most utilitarian applications of 
science on the other, with every possible gradation between these 
extremes, have been discussed before us by successive Presidents; 
and the addition from time to time of new Sections (one of which, that 
of Agriculture, we welcome at this Meeting) enables the whilom 
occupant of this chair to traverse paths which have not been previously 
trodden by his predecessors. On the last two occasions, under the 
genial guidance of Professors Bonney and Sir William Ramsay, we 
have successively been taken in imagination to the glaciers which 
flow between the highest peaks of the Alps and into the bowels of 
the earth; where we were invited to contemplate the prospective 
disappearance of the material upon which all our industrial prosperity 
depends. Needless to say that the lessons to be drawn from our visits 
to those unaccustomed levels were placed before us with all the 
eloquence with which these eminent representatives of Geology and 
Chemistry are gifted. It is fortunately not expected that I should be 
able to soar to such heights or to plunge to such depths, for the branch 
of science with which I am personally associated is merely concerned 
with the investigation of the problems of living beings, and I am able 
to invite you to remain for an hour or so at the level of ordinary 
mortality to consider certain questions which at any rate cannot fail 
to have an immediate interest for every one present, seeing that they 
deal with the nature, origin, and maintenance of life. 
Everybody knows, or thinks he knows, what life is; at least, we are 
? 
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