xxiv President's Address 



have undertaken to eontribute, and have opened their 

 museums and scientific storehouses in order that the collec- 

 tion shall be as complete as possible. Whatever intellectual 

 pursuit is aided by instrumental means will be duly repre- 

 sented in this collection ; and there will be brought together 

 not only the instruments of research used at the present 

 time, but many invaluable specimens of the tools with which 

 the early pioneers of human knowledge first began to ques- 

 tion Nature. The Astrolabe of Tycho Brahe, the telescope 

 of Galileo, will be seen together with the magnificent 

 astronomical instruments of the present day, prominent 

 among which are models of the great Melbourne reflector 

 and the gigantic Vienna refractor of 27 inches aperture. The 

 various sections are so arranged that in many cases the 

 history of the progress in the respective sciences is more 

 plainly shown than could be done by a written book ; while 

 throughout can be contrasted specimens of the earliest 

 apparatus used in any branch of science with the refined 

 appliances of the present day — Newton's simple optical 

 apparatus with the exquisite prisms and spectroscopes of to- 

 day ; Dalton's crude balance with the magnificent weighing- 

 machines of the present time, with the unimpeachable weights 

 of pure quartz. It would occupy too much time to speak 

 of this subject with any justice to its importance. The 

 value, however, of this movement cannot be over-estimated, 

 although — as science as yet unfortunately only interests the 

 few — it may not be so universally appreciated as we could 

 hope. The Times, in an article on the opening of this 

 exhibition, says : — " The exhibition which Her Majesty the 

 Queen privately visits and opens to-day is one of which not 

 only England, but Europe, may be justly proud. Pride, 

 however, is not the only sentiment we English should feel ; 

 for at last, if even only for a brief space, we have, under the 

 name of a loan collection of scientific apparatus, a Science 



