1908.] 



Anniversary Address by Lord Rayleigh. 



7 



The Eeport of the Treasury Committee of Inquiry referred to in the address 

 of last year was communicated by the Treasury to the Eoyal Society, with 

 the intimation that Their Lordships accept the recommendations of the Com- 

 mittee, and trust that the Eoyal Society may see their way to do the same. 

 In their reply the President and Council, with the concurrence and advice of 

 the Executive Committee of the Laboratory, expressed their readiness to use 

 their best endeavours to carry the Eeport into effect. The Eeport has since 

 been presented to Parliament. 



The buildings of the Magnetic Observatory at Eskdalemuir are now 

 occupied ; but, unfortunately, difficulty has arisen in making the magneto- 

 graph rooms which are underground completely watertight, and the recording 

 apparatus is not yet properly installed. 



The third and fourth volumes of ' Collected Eesearches ' of the Laboratory 

 have been published during the year, and testify to the vigorous scientific 

 activities of the staff. The third volume is occupied chiefly with the account 

 of the prolonged series of experiments on electric units carried out at the 

 Laboratory by Prof. Ayrton, Mr. Mather, Dr. Lowry, and Mr. Smith. These 

 researches proved of great value in the discussions at the International 

 Conference on Electric Units, for which recently the Society provided 

 accommodation and entertainment at the request of the Government. 



The progress of the ' Eoyal Society Catalogue of Scientific Papers ' has 

 advanced a definite stage during the year, through the publication by the 

 Cambridge University Press of the Index Volume of Pure Mathematics for 

 the Nineteenth Century. Owing to the magnitude of the material to be 

 indexed in the several sciences, it has been necessary to adopt drastic 

 measures of compression, and the 40,000 entries involved in the present 

 section have thus been condensed into one royal octavo volume of some 

 700 pages. An essential element in this saving of bulk has been the 

 grouping of titles within each heading so as to avoid reprinting the leading 

 words. It was, perhaps, inevitable that this device would occasionally be 

 mistaken for an attempt at organic classification within the limits of the 

 main headings, which are substantially those of the yearly ' International 

 Catalogue of Scientific Literature.' This had, indeed, been foreseen in the 

 preface of the volume. As regards new actual sub-headings which have been 

 introduced occasionally, the Committee remark that " These minor classifica- 

 tions, being often made mechanically on the basis of the explicit mention of 

 the sub-heading, are not to be taken as exhaustive ; cognate entries may be 

 found elsewhere under the same main heading. The unit of classification is 

 thus the complete numbered heading." 



The Committee of the Catalogue have indeed been fully conscious 



