masses. This, the agricultural branch of chemical science, has 

 an able exponent in our fellow-member, one of my predecessors 

 in this chair, Dr. Hodges. There is scarcely an important 

 industry that has not felt the influence of chemistry ; it is brought 

 perhaps most home to ourselves by the assistance it renders in 

 the bleaching and dyeing of yarns and threads, linens, and other 

 fabrics ; while in the detection of adulteration of food, impurities 

 in water, or poisonous substances in the human frame, it comes 

 to the assistance of the social reformer, the physician, and the 

 jurist. This society derives lustre from the fact that it reckons 

 among its now oldest members, and as a past president, one of 

 the most renowned of living chemists, Dr. Andrews. Again, 

 some branches of what is popularly known as social science, 

 such, for instance, as sanitary reform, and education, particularly 

 technical education, to which I purpose reverting later, would 

 not be out of place here ; and the somewhat neglected study of 

 one branch of zoology, I mean the natural history of fishes, 

 might be attended to with great advantage, with the view, by 

 the increased knowledge it would afford, to aid in the develop- 

 ment of the undoubtedly very valuable, but only partially worked 

 Irish fisheries. Although claiming as yet no place among the 

 exact sciences, it must be admitted that meteorology is pro- 

 gressing. Within our recollection weather forecasts were re- 

 garded as little better than mere speculations, but now, that 

 formerly mythical personage, the clerk of the weather, has 

 both " a local habitation and a name," and the weather fore- 

 casts that daily issue from his office, although of course some- 

 times at fault, are so generally accurate that their value to 

 the seafaring classes, and especially to fishermen, will not be 

 disputed. In this connection, I think it only right to pay a 

 tribute to the courage and devotion of Mr. Clement L. Wragge, 

 F.R.G.S., a gentleman who has been lately carrying out a series 

 of meteorological observations on Ben Nevis, and who, at the 

 imminent risk of his life, ascended the mountain in the fearful 

 storm of last Friday fortnight, the 14th October, for the pur- 

 pose of taking some observations, from which his knowledge 

 and experience enable him to draw some valuable deductions as 



