Annual Report of the Council. xlvii 



It is difficult to express in words the cause of his great 

 influence in the University. The original investigations he had 

 published, although important and stimulating, were not vast or 

 monumental, and being on points of somewhat technical 

 Physiological interest, did not attract the attention of the 

 general world of learning. His lectures were delivered in a 

 solemn monotone, and were devoid of the artificial stimulus to 

 interest obtained by skilful table experiments or even coloured 

 diagrams, and excepting during the first few years of his life in 

 Cambridge, he seldom came to demonstrate himself in the 

 laboratory. But the secret of his success seemed to be that he 

 taught his pupils not only what we know, but also what we want 

 to know, and every lecture seemed to give an impulse to all his 

 pupils who possessed a grain of scientific feeling to go into the 

 laboratory and try to find out something for themselves. 



In his private room, after lecture, when he sat in his chair 

 and puffed volumes of smoke from his pipe, Foster was at his 

 best. It was then that he granted private interviews to his 

 pupils, and few indeed there were who came out from that room 

 without feeling the better for his words of wisdom and kindly 

 interest. 



Apart from his important work in Cambridge, Foster took 

 an active interest in the proceedings of the Royal Society, of 

 which he was Secretary for twenty-two years, and of the British 

 Association, of which he became President at the Dover meeting 

 in 1899. 



In 1900 Michael Foster was elected Member of Parliament 

 for his old (London) University, and for a time sat on the 

 Conservative side of the House as a Liberal Unionist, but being 

 dissatisfied with some parts of the policy of the Government, 

 particularly the Education Bill, he joined the opposition until 

 the fall of the Balfour Ministry. In the General Election of 

 1906 he was defeated by Sir Philip Magnus by only 24 votes. 



Foster, elected an honorary member of this Society 

 in 1889, seldom visited us in Manchester, but many will 



