TEANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 



SECTION A.— MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 

 Peesident of the Section — Professor W. E. Atrtont, F.E..S. 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8. 

 The President delivered the following Address : — 



I SHALL, I feel sure, have your sympathy if I begin by referring to the great loss 

 which mathematics and physics have sustained in the untimely and disastrous 

 death of Dr. John Hopkinson. It has often been said that he who leads in mathe- 

 matics at Cambridge cannot follow the engineering life of Westminster. But a 

 striking disproof of the generality of this statement was furnished by the brilliant 

 work in the domains of theory and practice which was accomplished by him for 

 whom we mourn. 



Science has lost much, but the wife and mother has lost more, and to her, who 

 in one day saw effaced so large a portion of her life, goes forth the expression of 

 our grief and sorrow. 



A year ago Section A was charmed with a Presidential Address on the poetry 

 of mathematics, and if amongst those who entered the Physics lecture-theatre at 

 Toronto on that occasion there were any who had a preconceived notion that 

 mathematics was a hard, dry, repellent type of study, they must, after hearing 

 Professor Forsyth's eloquent vindication of its charms, have departed convinced 

 that mathematics resembled music in being a branch of the fine arts. Such an 

 address, however, cannot but leave a feeling of regret amongst those of us who, 

 engulfed in the whirl of the practical science of the day, sigh for the leisure and 

 the quiet which are necessary for the worship of abstract mathematical truth, 

 while the vain effort to follow in the footsteps of one gifted with such winning 

 eloquence fills me with hopeless despair. 



Section A this year is very fortimate in having its meetings associated with 

 those of an ' International Conference on Terrestrial Magnetism and Atmospheric 

 Electricity,' which is attended by the members of the ' Permanent Committee for 

 Terrestrial Magnetism and Atmospheric Electricity ' of the ' International Meteoro- 

 logical Conference.' It has been arranged that this Permanent Committee, of 

 which Professor Riicker is the President, shall form part of the General Committee 

 of Section A, and also shall act as the Committee of the International Conference, 

 which will itself constitute a separate department of Section A. For the purpose, 

 however, of preparing a Report to the International Meteorological Conference, 

 and for similar business, this Permanent Committee will acti independently of the 

 British Association. 



My first duty to-day, therefore, consists in expressing the honour and the very 

 great pleasure which I feel in bidding you, members of the International Con- 

 ference, most heartily welcome. 



Among the various subjects which it is probable that the Conference may 

 desire to discuss, there is one to which I will briefly refer as I am able to do so 



