xxii President's Address 



The progress of invention., in the practical application of 

 the known laws of electricity continues to attract great 

 attention, and every new adaptation appears to render the 

 scope for the utilisation of this force more and more wide. 

 In my last address I referred discouragingly to the too san- 

 guine expectation that electricity would soon supersede gas 

 for illumination, and although I have no reason yet to alter 

 opinions then expressed, there can be little doubt that 

 scientific reasoning and experiment have indicated methods 

 of overcoming many of the difficulties which were at that 

 time besetting the efforts of electricians and inventors, and 

 the prospects of the ultimate success of the electric light 

 for many purposes have become proportionably encouraging. 

 Great improvements, chiefly in the lamps and the methods 

 of supplying them with electricity, have been made, and, 

 although the promised new order of things which was to 

 arise out of the Edison patents is now almost forgotten, 

 Siemens Brothers, Jablokoff, Werdermann, Brush, and others 

 have carried their several systems in some directions to a 

 thoroughly practical success. The Thames Embankment, the 

 British Museum, and other places, it appears from the ac- 

 counts received, are now satisfactorily lighted by electricity; 

 and at the British Museum it is stated to be a great success. 

 Competitive trials of the relative merits of the Jablokoff 

 and Werdermann systems have lately been made at the 

 Opera-house, Paris, with a result somewhat in favour of 

 Werdermann's system. Several of the large ocean steamers, 

 the " City of Berlin," the " Potosi," and the " Chimborazo," 

 have now been fitted with Siemens machines and lamps ; 

 and on board the " Potosi/' which lately arrived here, the 

 experiment is said to have resulted most successfully. In 

 these and similar directions electric lighting seems to have a 

 hopeful future, but for ordinary domestic purposes, or for 

 those of street lighting, the prospect of its superseding our 

 present commodity, gas, is, to my mind, still very remote. 



I think I may safely state that electricity, generated by 



