president's address. 413 



the winter had been an excellent one for the herring fishery, so 

 that the fishermen ought to be tolerably prosperous, but he 

 was afraid the Cornish fisherman was not a man by whom thrift 

 and prudence were sufficiently studied. When the seasons were 

 good they had pockets sufficiently full, but when the season was 

 bad there was not sufficient " in the toe of the stocking " to meet 

 the necessities of life ; anything therefore to encourage thrift 

 among the fishermen should be encouraged, and above all any 

 system of insurance of their gear and boats, so that in case the 

 fisherman lost either or both he would have something to com- 

 mence with again instead of having lost his all. The fisherman of 

 to-day needed to be a man of science, and the establishment of 

 the laboratory of biology at Plymouth he held to be of great 

 importance and advantage to those in the west, and if the 

 fishermen could be induced to take a little scientific interest in 

 the pursuit of their calling, and not be content to follow the 

 old system which their fathers and forefathers had before them, 

 he believed they would find it greatly to their interest. 



Referring to the Local Government Act, he considered it a 

 most remarkable thing, that could only have occurred in a country 

 with such a settled constitution as England. It was most 

 remarkable to see the power which had been vested in the hands 

 of one idass for over 500 years suddenly transferred to a different 

 class without a murmur of any sort or kind. It was evidence 

 of the confidence which all classes of the English people had in 

 one another, and a great proof too of the way in which education 

 and enlightenment had been spread more widely through all 

 classes of society in England, and he hoped the present County 

 Council would be guided and actuated by the same desire and 

 spirit as their predecessors. 



Science still went on with its unresisting tread, taking up 

 fact after fact, theory after theory, solidifying them into practical 

 shapes. What vast strides had been made in electricity ! He 

 regarded the phonograph as the most awful invention of modern 

 days. To think that words uttered by him to-day might be 

 brought as evidence against him or his reputation a hundred 

 and fifty years hence ! But one of the evils of the present day 

 is evil-speaking, and it seemed to him that the phonograph was 



