1885.] 



President's Address. 



299 



are commonly known as the pleasures of society — I may yet regain 

 so much strength as is compatible with advancing years. But in order 

 to do so, I must, for a long time yet, be content to lead a more or less 

 anchoritic life. Now it is not fitting that your President should 

 be a hermit, and it becomes me, who have received so much kindness 

 and consideration from the Society, to be particularly careful that no 

 sense of personal gratification should delude me into holding the 

 office of its representative one moment after reason and conscience 

 have pointed out my incapacity to discharge the serious duties which 

 devolve upon the President, with some approach to efficiency. 



I beg leave, therefore, with much gratitude for the crowning honour 

 of my life which you have conferred upon me, to be permitted to 

 vacate the chair of the Society as soon as the business of this meeting 

 is at an end. 



As I am of opinion that it is very undesirable that the President 

 should even seem to wish to exert any influence, direct or indirect, on 

 the action of the Fellows assembled in General Meeting, I am silent 

 respecting the proposals embodied in the new list of the officers of 

 the Society which my colleagues and I have unanimously agreed to 

 submit for your consideration. 



The President then proceeded to the presentation of the Medals : — 

 The Copley Medal is awarded to Professor August Kekule of 

 Bonn, whose researches in organic chemistry, extended over the last 

 five-and-thirty years, have been fruitful of results of high importance 

 in chemical science. The great work of Professor Kekule's life, 

 that which has raised him to the highest rank among the inves- 

 tigators of the day, is his general theory of the constitution of 

 carbon compounds, in which the now universally accepted conception 

 of the constitution of those compounds was first clearly and definitely 

 stated. 



A development of the fundamental theory led Kekule to the dis- 

 covery of the constitution of an exceedingly numerous and very com- 

 plex class of compounds, which he has named the aromatic compounds, 

 and his theory of the constitution of the aromatic compounds has 

 suggested and guided innumerable investigations. The marvellous 

 success obtained by many of his followers and pupils in building up 

 artificially complex substances which had defied the efforts of all pre- 

 vious investigators, affords tangible evidence that Kekule's labours 

 have given us a deeper insight into the order of nature. 



One of the Royal Medals is awarded to Professor Hughes, F.fl.S., 

 for a series of experimental investigations in electricity and magnetism, 

 which are remarkable alike for ingenuity of contrivance, for the 

 simplicity of the apparatus employed, for the delicacy of the indica- 

 tions afforded, and for the wide applicability of the instruments 



