xxiv President's Address 



occupying the region of Fraunhofer's G line, and between 

 G and H, and, therefore, nearly at the limit of the visible 

 spectrum. Professor Draper also considers that the photo- 

 graphs afford evidence of the existence of nitrogen, which 

 also appears in the form of bright lines. This discovery will 

 necessarily lead to some modification of the hitherto adopted 

 views of the constitution of the sun's surface, and adds 

 another to the already long list of telluric elements found 

 to exist upon our luminary. 



In my last address I referred at some length to the then 

 recent invention of the telephone. Since then this wonderful 

 little instrument has been greatly improved, and is now in 

 actual use in Melbourne, not only as a scientific toy, but as 

 a means of communication. We had no sooner become 

 familiar with the telephone than we were astounded by 

 accounts of a still more wonderful apparatus — the "phono- 

 graph"— by which, it was stated, sounds and human speech 

 could be automatically imprinted on a sheet of tinfoil and 

 reproduced with all the original intonations at will and at 

 any subsequent time. Still later we hear of the " micro- 

 phone," by which the faintest sounds can be heard by means 

 of the telephone, highly intensified, and at long distances 

 from their source. All of these instruments are more 

 or less familiar to our members, for they have been 

 exhibited, explained, and commented upon at several of the 

 ordinary meetings, and I believe there are specimens of them 

 all in the building to-night. The principles recognised in 

 the action of the telephone and microphone point to the 

 existence of an entirely new field for experiment in some of 

 the less understood properties of magnetism and electricity ; 

 and although their practical applications are as yet limited, 

 there can be but little doubt that they will eventually 

 become of great value to the electrician, physicist, and even 

 to the surgeon ; indeed, the value of the microphone in 



