EVENING DISCOURSES. 
FIRST EVENING DISCOURSE 
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1934. 
TRANSPORT AND STORAGE OF FOOD 
BY 
SIR FRANK SMITH, K.C.B., C.B.E., Sec. R.S. 
(Being a Memorial Lecture for Sir William Hardy, F.R.S., 
late President of the Association). 
INTRODUCTION. 
Ir is a privilege which I greatly esteem to deliver the Hardy Memorial 
Lecture, an occasion which for me is fragrant with the memories of him 
whose life we commemorate ; an occasion, too, which is shot with sorrow 
and regret. Had Providence seen fit, Sir William Hardy would have 
presided over this meeting of the British Association, and I know he would 
have addressed you on the subject of research in foodstuffs. It is a subject 
of which he was the foremost research worker in the world, and he was an 
incomparable exponent of it. He had command of vivid, robust English 
which enlivened and adorned all his addresses, and he had a crusading 
enthusiasm which invested the most intricate scientific problem with a 
romantic glow which never failed to stir his audience. 
To an assembly such as this, it would be superfluous to extol Sir William 
Hardy’s services to science; but I may, perhaps, be permitted to pay a 
brief tribute to him as a colleague. 
William Bate Hardy was of a type which is rare at any time. ‘That he 
was a born leader all who knew him will acknowledge, and he led, as all 
true leaders do, by inspiring his colleagues with something of his own 
enthusiasm, by communicating to them glimpses of his own transcendent 
vision. He drove himself hard—too hard, alas !—and he could also drive 
his colleagues ; but when he did, he drove them with sympathy and under- 
standing, and such was the affection he inspired, that to expend oneself in 
the tasks he set was a labour of love. Hardy’s greatest characteristic was 
his zest for life ; living was, to him, a thrilling experience ; he lived with 
all his might, and he savoured and appreciated and enjoyed everything that 
life offered him. I can never think of him without recalling those great 
figures of our literature that he himself loved so deeply—Chaucer, Shake- 
speare, Fielding, Dickens. He, like them, was passionately in love with 
life ; he had no fear of it, and he lived with a full-blooded gusto far beyond 
the range of most men. 
He was a great student of social history, and he saw the importance, as 
few men did, of having more knowledge of the food which we import in 
such great quantities. He was not concerned with the production of food, 
