536 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 405. 



with the choice of Belfast as the meeting- 

 place of the British Association this year. 

 Or, if it had not, then it must be admitted 

 that circumstances have conspired, as they 

 occasionally do, to render the actual selec- 

 tion peculiarly felicitous. Belfast has 

 perennial claims, of a kind that cannot 

 easily be surpassed, to be the scene of a 

 great scientific gathering— claims founded 

 upon its scientific traditions and upon the 

 conspicuous energy and success with which 

 its citizens have prosecuted in various di- 

 rections the application of science to the 

 purposes of life. It is but the other day 

 that the whole nation deplored at the grave 

 of Lord Dufferin the loss of one of the most 

 distinguished and most versatile public 

 servants of the age. That great statesman 

 and near neighbor of Belfast was a typical 

 expression of the qualities and the spirit 

 which have made Belfast what it is, and 

 have enabled Ireland, in spite of all draw- 

 backs, to play a great part in the Empire. 

 I look around on your thriving and pro- 

 gressive city giving evidence of an enor- 

 mous aggregate of industrial efforts in- 

 telligently organized and directed for the 

 building up of a sound social fabric. I 

 find that your great industries are inter- 

 linked and interwoven with the whole eco- 

 nomic framework of the Empire, and that 

 you are silently and irresistibly compelled 

 to harmonious cooperation by practical 

 considerations acting upon the whole com- 

 munity. It is here that I look for the real 

 Ireland, the Ireland of the future. We 

 cannot trace with precision the laws that 

 govern the appearance of eminent men, 

 but we may at least learn from history that 

 they do not spring from every soil. They 

 do not appear among decadent races or in 

 ages of retrogression. They are the fine 

 flower of the practical intellect of the na- 

 tion working studiously and patiently in 

 accordance with the great laws of conduct. 

 In the manifold activities of Belfast we 



have a splendid manifestation of individ- 

 ual energy working necessarily, even if not 

 altogether consciously, for the national 

 good. In great Irishmen like Lord Duf- 

 ferin and Lord Roberts, giving their best 

 energies for the defense of the nation by 

 diplomacy or by war, we have comple- 

 mentary evidence enough to reassure the 

 most timid concerning the real direction 

 of Irish energies and the vital nature of 

 Irish solidarity with the rest of the Em- 

 pire. 



Belfast has played a prominent part in 

 a transaction of a somewhat special and 

 significant kind, which has proved not a 

 little confusing and startling to the easy- 

 going public. The significance of the ship- 

 ping combination lies in the light it throws 

 on the conditions and tendencies which 

 make such things possible, if not even in- 

 evitable. It is an event forcibly illustra- 

 ting the declaration of His Royal Highness 

 the Prince of Wales, that the nation must 

 'wake up' if it hopes to face its growing 

 responsibilities. Belfast may plead with 

 some jiistice that it, at least, has never gone 

 to sleep. In various directions an immense 

 advance has been effected during the 

 twenty-eight yeare that have elapsed since 

 the last visit of the British Association. 

 Belfast has become first a city and then a 

 county, and now ranks as one of the eight 

 largest cities in the United Kingdom. Its 

 municipal area has been considerably ex- 

 tended, and its population has increased 

 by something like seventy-five per cent. 

 It has not only been extended, but im- 

 proved and beautified in a manner which 

 very few places can match, and which prob- 

 ably none can surpass. Fine new thor- 

 oughfares, adorned with admirable public 

 institutions, have been run through areas 

 once covered with crowded and squalid 

 buildings. Compared with the early fif- 

 ties, when iron shipbuilding was begun on 

 a very modest scale, the customs collected 



