4 THE president's INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 



Box Tunnel, and that of tlio Bristol and Exojtor Railway on 

 Cambridge's Batch Tunnel, in company with my old friend 

 George Clarke, now of Dowlais. 



Having got through this little personal matter, I will 

 now proceed to discuss our own special objects in thus meet- 

 ing together, though I must allow that it was at first some- 

 thing of a puzzle to me to decide what thread of connexion 

 there could bo between the parent Society of Naturalists 

 and such an offshoot as the Engineering Section : what title 

 they have, in fact, to claim the fatherhood of sach an olf- 

 spring. 



I have only been able to satisfy my conscience upon this 

 point by recalling to my mind that Naturalists are the dis- 

 ciples of Na,tnro iu all her grandeur, both animate and in- 

 animate ; and that the living animal is the highest study 

 in Nature: for even the inanimate remains, and other 

 evidences of a former existence that they ha,vo left bc^lnnd 

 them, form a distinctive branch of study in one of our most 

 interesting and popular sciences of the day, and by the most 

 learned professors of that science. 



Now, I claim for the lllngineors that their ingenuity has 

 devised and constructed a most useful arid powerful machine 

 which makes the nearest approach to the living animal yet 

 known, and this without being a mere copy ov outside imita- 

 tion of any aninuil : I mean, of course, the locomotive, or 

 " iron horse," as it has sometimes been called, which, I take 

 it, forms, as I have said, the nearest approach to the func- 

 tions of a living animal ever yet made by man. It consumes 

 its food and its drink, and dejects the refuse ; and these 

 operations are necessary for it to maintain its active powers. 

 It breathes and puffs like ahorse— more particularly while 

 drawing a heavy load, or going up hill — and it is under the 

 full control of its driver) like the best trained draught 



