186 



A nniversary Meeting. 



[Nov. 30, 



book containing the solution of a variety of problems. In Robert 

 Hunt we have lost an aged Fellow whose name is well known in 

 connexion with, the study of the action of light in producing chemical 

 changes, and on vegetation. In Joseph Baxendell we had a man 

 who during a long life was a diligent observer of astronomical and 

 meteorological phenomena. John Arthur Phillips, a geologist who 

 attended more particularly to the chemical origin of minera logical 

 and geological phenomena, was the author of several papers, some of 

 which appear in our own Proceedings. It is not long since Sir 

 Julius von Haast was among us, apparently in full vigour, having 

 come to England in connexion with the Colonial Exhibition, and 

 now this distinguished geologist and naturalist is no more. The 

 Earl of Iddesleigh was suddenly carried off in the midst of the 

 duties belonging to an important office in the State, while Beresford- 

 Hope has succumbed to an illness of some duration. These two 

 joined us under the statute which enables the Council to recom- 

 mend to the Society for election, in addition to the fifteen who 

 are selected in the ordinary way, and nearly always on account 

 of their scientific claims, persons who are members of Her Majesty's 

 Most Honourable Privy Council, and whose ability is thus attested, 

 though they are not usually men of science. From the list of 

 foreign Members, one name has disappeared which has become a 

 household word among the physicists of all civilized nations. The 

 name of Kirchhoff will ever be remembered as that of the introducer, 

 conjointly with Bunsen, of spectral analysis into the regular work 

 of the chemical laboratory, a step which has been so fertile in results. 

 To him too we owe the reference of the dark lines of the solar 

 spectrum to the absorption of portions of light coming from deeper 

 portions of the sun by the vapours of substances which in the con- 

 dition of incandescent vapour themselves emit bright lines in corre- 

 sponding positions, and to him therefore we are indebted for the 

 detection of chemical elements in the sun and stars, though partial 

 anticipations of these discoveries had been made by others. The 

 fertility of these researches, and the attention which they consequently 

 excited, should not make us forget the many important investigations 

 in mathematical physics of which Kirchhoff was the author. 



The present year is memorable as the Jubilee of the reign of Her 

 Most Gracious Majesty our beloved Sovereign, and the Patron of our 

 Society. An address of congratulation on this auspicious event was 

 prepared by the Council, and was graciously received by Her Majesty 

 in Windsor Castle at the hands of your President, who was accom- 

 panied on that occasion by the senior Secretary. 



It happens that this same year is also the Jubilee of the Electric 

 Telegraph, if we date from the first construction of a telegraph on an 

 actually working scale, as distinguished from preparatory experiments 



