458 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVIII. Xo.719 



over the pi-esidential address, for it only 

 occupies two pages of print. My inclina- 

 tion towards periodicities and another con- 

 sideration leads me to regard the precedent 

 as a good one. That other consideration 

 is that Section A has always more sub- 

 jects for discussion than it can properlj' 

 dispose of; and, in this ease, discipline, 

 like charity, might begin at home. 



Since the section met last year it has 

 lost its most illustrious member and its 

 most faithful friend. Lord Kelvin made 

 his first contribution to Section A at Cam- 

 bridge in 1845, on the elementary laws of 

 statical electricity ; he was president of the 

 section in 1852 at Belfast for the first of 

 five times. I have looked to see what sug- 

 gestion I could derive from his first essay 

 in that capacitj-. I can find no reference 

 to any address in the published volume. 

 I wish I had the courage to follow that 

 great example. 



Lord Kelvin's association with Section 

 A was so constant and so intimate that it 

 requires more than a passing word of 

 reference. There is probablj^ no student of 

 mathematics or physics grown into a posi- 

 tion of responsibility in this country but 

 keeps among his ti-easured reminiscences 

 some words of inspiration and of en- 

 couragement from Kelvin, spoken in the 

 surroundings which we are once more met 

 to inaugTirate. I refer to those unre- 

 corded acts of kindness and help because 

 they were reaUy a striking characteristic 

 of Section A. Their value for the amenity 

 as well as for the advancement of science 

 it would be difficult to over-estimate. I 

 could not, even if time permitted, hope to 

 set before you an adequate appreciation of 

 Kelvin's contributions to science as illus- 

 trated by his communications to this sec- 

 tion, and in this place it is not necessarj'. 

 But I can not pass over that feature of his 

 character without notice. 



Closely following on the loss of Kelvin 



came the death of Sir Richard Strachey, a 

 personal loss to which it is difficult to give 

 expression. I am not aware that he had 

 much to do with Section A. I wish, in- 

 deed, that the section had seen its way to 

 bring him more closely into touch with its 

 proceedings. He was president of Section 

 E in 1875, and, by appointment of the 

 Royal Society, he was for twenty-two years 

 chairman of the meteorological council. I 

 had the good fortune to be very closely as- 

 sociated with him during the last ten yeai-s 

 of his life, and to realize the ideas which 

 lay behind his official actions and to appre- 

 ciate the reality of his services to science in 

 the past and for the future. 



These losses unfortunately do not stand 

 alone. Only last ye^r Sir John Eliot re- 

 ceived the congratulations of all his feUow- 

 workers upon the publication of his 

 ' ' Climatological Atlas of India ' ' as repre- 

 senting the most conspicuous achievement 

 of orderly, deliberate, purposeful compila- 

 tion of meteorological facts for a special 

 area that has yet been seen. He was full 

 of projects for a handbook to accompany 

 the atlas, and of ideas for the prosecution 

 of meteorological research over wide areas 

 by collecting information from aU the 

 world and enlisting the active cooperation 

 of the constituent parts of the British em- 

 pire in using those observations for the ad- 

 vancement of science and the benefit of 

 mankind. He died quite suddenly on 

 March 18, not young as years go, but quite 

 youthful in the deliberate purpose of mani- 

 fold scientific activities and in his ii-repres- 

 sible faith in the future of the science 

 which he has adorned. 



The section will, I hope, forgive me if I 

 put before them some considerations which 

 the careers of these three men suggest. Kel- 

 vin, a mathematician, a natural philosopher, 

 a university professor, some part of whose 

 scientific work is known to each one of us. 

 He was possessed with the notion that 



