lxii Annual Report of the Council 



itself, by the Metropolitan Board of Works and by the authorities 

 of the Mersey and Irwell Watershed, who were fain that their 

 rivers should be made pure even as Father Thames had been. 

 Roscoe's design of a National Water (Supply) Board remains a 

 vision of the future. Of his effective interest in the all-important 

 subject of Preventive Medicine I have already spoken. 



In 1896, he became Vice-Chancellor of the Univeisity of 

 London, and during six years presided with his usual ability and 

 success over the deliberations of the rulers of that body, which, 

 notwithstanding the great work already done by it for the nation, 

 seemed to be as it were perpetually im Werden. He had to 

 superintend the reconstruction of the University, after the report 

 of two Royal Commissions, as a teaching body— the develop- 

 ment which, of all oihers, he had at heart, but the accomplish- 

 ment of which affected the interests of a number of other 

 institutions in and out of London, as well as of the constituent 

 Colleges ; while its important and time-honoured examining 

 functions continued. He had to preside over the appointment 

 of a new and complex Governing Body and of a practically new 

 administrative staff. And he had to carry through the decision 

 on the thorny question of the University's new local habitation. 

 Fortunately for himself and the University, he had, in most of 

 these matters, the counsel and assistance of the first occupant 

 of the newly-created office of Principal, the late Sir Arthur 

 Riicker, to whom, as to his successor, now our A T ice-Chancellor 

 at Manchester, our elder sister at London owes a very great debt. 

 Roscoe's six years of office were thus far from being years of. 

 dignified leisure, and his name will be gratefully remembered 

 among those of the re-founders of the great institution which had 

 developed out of the college that had been the Alma Mater of 

 his youth. Yet when, in 1904, the crowning hour of his long 

 life and indefatigable labours was paid to him by his pupils, 

 colleagues and friends from all over the world, it was character- 

 istic of him and of the loyalty which ennobled the conduct of 

 his life that he should have chosen Manchester for the scene of 

 the homage offered to him, and that it was his Heidelberg 



