808 FINAL JOURNEYS AND WORK. [1887, 
significant way. For I am old enough to have taken 
my earliest lessons in chemistry just at the time when 
the atomic theory of Dalton was propounded and was 
taught in the text-books as the latest new thing in 
science. Some years earlier, Washington Irving, in 
his Sketeh-book, had hallowed to our youthful minds 
the name of Roscoe, making it the type of all that 
was liberal, wise, and gracious. And when I came to 
know something of botany, I found that this exem- 
plar as well as patron of good learning had, by his 
illustrations of monandrian plants, taken rank among 
the patres conscripti of the botany of that day. 
“The name so highly honored then we now honor 
in the grandson. And I am confident that I express 
the sentiments of your foreign guests whom I repre- 
sent, when I simply copy the words of your president 
in 1842, now reproduced in the opening paragraph of 
the address of the president of 1887, transferring, as 
we fitly may, the application from the earlier to the 
later Manchester chemist. 
«Manchester is still the residence of one whose 
name is uttered with respect wherever science is culti- 
vated, who is here to-night to enjoy the honors due to 
a long career of persevering devotion to knowledge.’ 
“T cannot continue the quotation without material 
change. ‘That increase of years to him has been but 
increase of wisdom,’ may, indeed be said of Roscoe 
no less than of Dalton; but we are happy to know 
that we are now contemplating not the diminished 
strength of the close, but the manly vigor of the mid- 
course of a distinguished career. Long and prospcr- 
ously may it go on from strength to strength. 
“In general, praise of the address which we have 
had the pleasure of hearing would not be particularly 
