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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIV. No. 359- 



speaker by a short address of his own (as is 

 customary in England), was rather bitter 

 in his denunciation of those who did not 

 accept the theories advanced. Hence it 

 seems doubtful if the popular audience car- 

 ried away a fair appreciation of the question. 

 The two evening lectures were noteworthy 

 because given by men whose names are 

 household words in the scientific world. 

 Professor Eamsay's topic was ' The Inert 

 Constituents of the Atmosphere,' and 

 though the unfortunate failure of the light 

 prevented some of his diagrams from being 

 visible at the proper time, the lucid explana- 

 tions made the discourse entirely intelligible. 

 Especially interesting was the description 

 of the long and painstaking experiments 

 and researches which resulted in the fa- 

 mous discovery of argon in 1894, followed 

 in 1895 by that of helium, and in 1898 by 

 that of three other elements to which the 

 names of neon, krypton and xenon were 

 applied. The second lecture, on ' The 

 Movements of Plants,' by Mr. Francis 

 Darwin, was a beautifully simple exposition 

 of a most abstruse subject, namely, how 

 gravity acted to force plants to grow along 

 vertical lines. While the lecturer thought 

 that plants might be classed as vegetable 

 automata, yet he was inclined to believe 

 that mind was always implicated in life, and 

 that, with a fuller knowledge of conscious- 

 ness, we should admit that the rudiments 

 of the psychic element existed even in 

 plants. There follows an abstract of the 

 presidential addresses and of the work of 

 the Sections of Mathematics and Physical 

 Science, Chemistry and Engineering. 



MATHEMATICS AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 



The president of this Section was Major 

 P. A. MacMahon, F.R.S., and his address 

 dealt first with the position that mathe- 

 matical science occupied at the beginning 

 of the nineteenth century in the British 

 Isles and on the continent of Europe. As 



regards organization and cooperation in 

 mathematics, Germany, he thought, stood 

 first now. The illustration offered by 

 international cooperation in astronomy af- 

 forded a useful object lesson to all men of 

 science, and might encourage those who 

 had the ability and the opportunity to make 

 strenuous efforts to further progress by 

 bringing the work of many to a single focus. 

 In pure science a free interchange of ideas 

 was possible, but in applied physics the 

 commercial spirit exercised an influence, 

 and it was the duty of the Association to 

 take an active attitude toward this blot 

 on the page of applied science. The im- 

 portance of science teaching in secondary 

 schools had been overlooked. Those 

 concerned in our industries had not seen 

 the advantage of treating their workshops 

 and manufactories as laboratories of re- 

 search, and the Government had given too 

 meager an endowment to scientific institu- 

 tions and had failed adequately to encour- 

 age scientific men. At the present time, 

 the number of workers is so large, the 

 treatises and scientific journals so numer- 

 ous, the ramifications of investigations so 

 complicated that it was scarcely possible to 

 acquire a competent knowledge of the prog- 

 ress being made in the many divisions of 

 science. Hence the so-called specialist has 

 come into being, and the word was often 

 used as a term of opprobrium or as a sym- 

 bol of narrow-mindedness. What is re- 

 quired is not the disparagement of the 

 specialist, but the stamping out of narrow- 

 mindedness, and of ignorance of the nature 

 of the scientific spirit and of the life-work 

 of those who devote their lives to scientific 

 research. The specialist who wishes to ac- 

 complish work of the highest excellence 

 must be learned in the resources of science 

 and have constantly in mind its grandeur 

 and its unity. Lord Kelvin and Professor 

 Eiicker offered the motion for a vote of 

 thanks, and then the regular work of the 



