PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 21 



One of our past presidents, Professor Threlfall, f.r.s., on 

 March the 10th, lectured at the Royal Institution in London 

 on experiments at high temperatures and pressures, when 

 he exhibited apparatus capable of producing a pressure of 

 100 tons on the square inch and the temperature of 2,000° 

 Centigrade. Referring to the earth's heat, he proposed to 

 tap the earth's heat energy by driving a shaft twelve miles 

 deep into the crust of the earth. He suggests that it 

 would be a good thing on the part of some millionaire to 

 spend five millions of money in its achievement, the work 

 requiring eighty-five years to accomplish. 



One event of the year of no mean magnitude has been 

 the coming of age of the Australasian Association for the 

 Advancement of Science, which twenty-one years ago was 

 founded in this city in these very rooms by Professor Liver- 

 sidge, who was its first general secretary, and whose mantle 

 has fittingly fallen on Mr. J. H. Maiden. Our memories 

 go back to the preliminary meetings twenty-one years ago, 

 when a band of earnest science workers including Dr. 

 George Bennett, Sir Alfred Roberts, Sir Edward Strickland, 

 Dr. Howitt, Mr. Mann, Mr. Russell, Professor Stephens, 

 Captain Brett, C. S. Wilkinson, Gilbert Parker, Mr. Monte- 

 fiore, the Baron von Mueller and a number of those still 

 living were instrumental in its foundation. At the meet- 

 ing of the Association' in Brisbane last January, some 

 illuminating and suggestive addresses were given on the 

 electronic theory of matter which now pervades the domains 

 of chemistry and physics, to the greater elucidation of those 

 foundational principles of affinity and chemical actions. 



Another event of the year is the occurrence of the Darwin 

 centenary, to be celebrated in Oxford in August next, by 

 delegates and representatives from all parts of the world. 

 Our own Society will be ably represented by Professor 

 Liversidge, who will present an address on behalf of our 



