2 Anniversary Address by Prof. C. S. Sherrington. 



to the Board of Trade he obtained, partly in collaboration with the late 

 W. Watson, data most valuably discriminating between various types of 

 colour vision; he contributed accurate measurements of visual differences 

 between the foveal and para-foveal regions of the retina. His measurements 

 of the visual luminosity curve of the spectrum stand as classical data of 

 reference. He is remembered in the Society as a man whose personality 

 endeared him to everyone who knew him. 



The death of Spencer Percival Umfreville Pickering removed a 

 chemist, who at the time of his election to the Society, was one of the most 

 arduous and prolific of researchers. The main theme of his work was 

 solution and hydrates. A man of original view he often collided rather than 

 moved with the scientific trend of the time, but he spared himself no pains in 

 the pursuit of observations. His association with the Society will be happily 

 perpetuated by the bequest from him, to become a research fund bearing his 

 name. 



Alexander Mtjirhead, whose name is connected with the duplexing of. 

 submarine cables by the artificial line with distributed capacity, also con- 

 tributed perseveringly to the practical establishment of electrical standards 

 of capacity. Much of his work was accomplished against difficulties of 

 health which would have disheartened any but a man of remarkable courage 

 and resolution. 



Lazarus Fletcher was for ten years Director of the Natural History 

 Museum. Mathematically trained, his chief scientific interest lay in 

 problems connected with the physics of crystals, though much of his time 

 was given to the great National Collection of minerals of which he had 

 charge for nearly thirty years. He devoted much patient and accurate 

 research to the meteorites in that collection. His papers that are probably 

 best known are those on the dilatation of crystals by heat, and on the 

 Optical Indicatrix and transmission of light in crystals. In the latter of 

 these he showed how the optical characters of crystals could be simply 

 developed from the geometrical properties of an ellipsoid (which he called 

 the Indicatrix) independently of any hypothesis as to the nature of the 

 ether. His method has now been adopted by almost all teachers of the 

 subject. Those who knew Sir Lazarus Fletcher are not likely to forget his 

 simplicity of manner, his quiet humour and his unfailing consideration for 

 others. 



William Odling, for many years Professor of Chemistry at Oxford, died 

 there this spring at the age of ninety-two, severing a link with the chemistry 

 of the mid- Victorian time. It was under his Chairmanship of the Institute 

 of Chemistry that that body was granted its Charter in 1885. 



