4 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 



described the purpose of the proposed Association in the following 

 words : ^ 



' The principal objects would be to make the cultivators of 

 science acquainted with each other, to stimulate one another to 

 new exertions, to bring the objects of science more before the 

 public eye, and to take measures for advancing its interests and 

 accelerating its progress,' 



There, in a nutshell, is what the Association set out to do, what 

 it may fairly claim to have done, and what it still does. If you 

 want an illustration, you had it last year when a great audience sat 

 for hours, with every sign of sustained attention, while the Evolution 

 of the Universe was discussed by British and foreign specialists of 

 acknowledged authority, immense learning, and conspicuous variety 

 of opinion. 



At the end of that symposium the debate was admirably summed 

 up by Sir Oliver Lodge, the Nestor of physics, who in every sense 

 has filled a big place in our gatherings for more than fifty years. 

 He has taught us much : would that he could teach his secret of 

 perpetual youth 1 In a recent volume of reminiscences ^ he tells 

 delightfully of the meetings he has frequented and the friendships 

 to which they have led. If he is thankful for them, so are we for 

 him. Not a few of us have found inspiration in the fountain of 

 his knowledge, in the spontaneity and aptness of his spoken word, 

 in the width of his sympathy and understanding, and have learnt 

 to love him for his large humanity. 



My own first contact with these meetings antedates even that 

 of Sir Oliver. Sixty-five years ago it chanced that the Association 

 in its peripatetic course came, for the first time, to my native town 

 and I was taken, a boy of twelve, by my mother to the Section of 

 Mechanical Science, having already announced my intention of 

 becoming an engineer. To the pundits of Section G we must have 

 seemed an odd pair, the douce minister's wife and the shy little boy 

 in his kilt. It was by my own wish, of course, that I was taken, 

 and my mother counted no labour lost that might develop intelligence 

 in her family of sons. The boy could not understand much of what 

 he heard ; it was something, however, to see the leonine head of 

 the sectional president, Macquorn Rankine, over whose engineering 

 text-books he was later to spend many assiduous hours. There is 

 no boundary to a mother's dreams, but in their wildest excursion 

 they can scarcely then have pictured what is happening in this hall 

 to-night. 



^ The British Association : A Retrospect, 1831-1931, by O. J. R. Howarth, p. 14. 

 ^ Advancing Science, being Personal Reminiscences of the British Association 

 in the Nineteenth Century, by Sir Oliver Lodge. 



