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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIV. No. 351. 



sure that at this, the first meeting of the 

 British Association held in his reign, I am 

 only expressing the universal opinion of all 

 our members when I say that no group of 

 the King's subjects trusts more implicitly 

 than we do in the ability, skill and judg- 

 ment which His Majesty has already shown 

 in the exercise of the powers and duties of 

 his august office ; that none sympathize 

 more deeply with the sorrows which two 

 great nations have shared with their sov- 

 ereigns ; and that none cry with more fer- 

 vor, ' Long live the King !' 



But this meeting of the British Associ- 

 ation is not only remarkable as being the 

 first in a new reign. It is also the first in 

 the new century. It is held in Glasgow at 

 a time when your International Exhibition 

 has in a special sense attracted the atten- 

 tion of the world to your city, and when 

 the recent celebration of the ninth jubilee 

 of your University has shown how deeply 

 the prosperity of the present is rooted in 

 the past. What wonder, then, if I take 

 the chair to which you have called me with 

 some misgivings? Born and bred in the 

 south, I am to preside over a meeting held 

 in the largest city of Scotland. As your 

 chosen mouthpiece I am to speak to you of 

 science when we stand at the parting of the 

 centuries, and when the achievements of 

 the past and present, and the promise of 

 the future, demand an interpreter with 

 gifts of knowledge and divination to which 

 I cannot pretend. Lastly, I am president of 

 the British Association as a disciple in the 

 home of the master, as a physicist in a city 

 which a physicist has made forever famous. 

 Whatever the future may have in store for 

 Glasgow, whether your enterprise is still to 

 add wharf to wharf, factory to factory and 

 street to street, or whether some unforeseen 

 'tide in the affairs of men' is to sweep 

 energy and success elsewhere, fifty-three 

 years in the history of your city will never 

 be forgotten while civilization lasts. 



More than half a century ago, a mere lad 

 was the first to compel the British Associa- 

 tion to listen to the teaching Joule, and 

 to accept the law of the conservation of 

 energy. Now, alike in the most difficult 

 mathematics and in the conception of the 

 most ingeniou'S apparatus, in the daring 

 of his speculations and in the sound- 

 ness of his engineering, William Thom- 

 son, Lord Kelvin, is regarded as a leader 

 by the science and industry of the whole 

 world. 



It is the less necessary to dwell at length 

 upon all that he has done, for Lord Kelvin 

 has not been withoiit honor in his own 

 country. Many of us, who meet here to- 

 night, met last in Glasgow when the Uni- 

 versity and city had invited representatives 

 of all nations to celebrate the jubilee of his 

 professorship. For those two or three days 

 learning was surrounded with a pomp 

 seldom to be seen outside a palace. The 

 strange middle-age costumes of all the chief 

 universities of the world were jostling here, 

 the outward signs that those who were 

 themselves distinguished in the study of 

 Nature had gathered to do honor to one of 

 the most distinguished of them all. 



Lord Kelvin's achievements were then 

 described in addresses in every tongue, and 

 therefore I will only remind you that we, 

 assembled here to-night, owe him a heavy 

 debt of gratitude ; for the fact that the 

 British Association enters on the twentieth 

 century conscious of a work to do and of 

 the vigor to do it is largely due to his con- 

 stant presence at its meetings and to the 

 support he has so ungrudgingly given. We 

 have learned to know not only the work of 

 our great leader, but the man himself ; and 

 I count myself happy because in his life- 

 long home, under the walls of the university 

 he served so well, and at a meeting of the 

 Association which his genius has so often 

 illuminated, I am allowed, as your Presi- 

 dent, to assure him in your name of the 



