ADDRESS 
By 
Srr OLIVER J. LODGE, D.Sc., LL.D., F.B.S., 
: PRESIDENT. 
CONTINUITY. 
First let me lament the catastrophe which has led to my occupying 
the Chair here in this City. Sir William White was a personal friend 
of many here present, and I would that the citizens of Birmingham 
could have become acquainted with his attractive personality, and 
heard at first hand of the strenuous work which he accomplished in 
carrying out the behests of the Empire in the construction of its first 
line of defence. 
Although a British Association Address is hardly an annual stock- 
taking, it would be improper to begin this year of Office without refer- 
ring to three more of our losses:—One, that cultured gentleman, 
amateur of science in the best sense, who was chosen to preside over 
our Jubilee meeting at’ York thirty-two years ago. Sir John Lubbock, 
first Baron Avebury, cultivated science in a spirit of pure enjoyment, 
treating it almost as one of the Arts; and he devoted social and political 
energy to the welfare of the multitude of his fellows less fortunately 
situated than himself. 
Through the untimely death of Sir George Darwin the world has 
lost a mathematical astronomer whose work on the Tides and allied 
phenomena is a monument of power and achievement. So recently as 
our visit to South Africa he occupied the Presidential Chair. 
By the third of our major losses, I mean the death of that brilliant 
Mathematician of a neighbouring nation who took so comprehensive 
and philosophic a grasp of the intricacies of physics, and whose eloquent 
though sceptical exposition of our laws and processes, and of the 
modifications entailed in them by recent advances, will be sure to 
attract still more widespread attention among all to whom the rather 
abstruse subject-matter is sufficiently familiar. I cannot say that I 
find myself in agreement with all that Henri Poincaré wrote or spoke 
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