1889.] 



Presidents Address. 



Fellows elected since 



Ait ken, John. 

 Ballard, Edward, M.D. 

 Basset, Alfred Barnard, M.A. 

 Brown, Horace T., F.C.S. 

 Clark, Latimer, M.I.C.E. 

 Cunningham, Professor David 



Douglas, M.B. 

 Fletcher, Lazarus, M.A. 

 Hemsley, William Botting, A.L.S. 

 Hudson, Charles Thomas, LL.D. 



the last Anniversary. 



Huo-hes, Prof. Thomas McKenny, 

 M.A. 



Poulton, Edward B., M.A. 



Sollas, Professor William John- 

 son, D.Sc. 



Todd, Charles, M.A. 



Tomlinson, Herbert, B.A. 



Worms, Right Hon. Baron Henry 

 de. 



Yeo, Professor Gerald F., M.D. 



The President then addressed the Society as follows : — 



In t an annual assembling of any body of men as large as that of our 

 Fellows, it must in the course of nature be expected that of those who 

 were or might have been present on one such occasion some will have 

 been removed by death before the next comes round. But the death- 

 roll of the year, which according to our custom is read by the Senior 

 Secretary at our annual meeting, is on this occasion unusually heavy, 

 and the list recalls to us several who have taken an active part in 

 the ordinary work of the Society, and some whose names will be 

 prominently remembered by posterity. 



Warren de la Rue, who has repeatedly served on the Council and 

 Committees of the Society, was one of the early pioneers in the appli- 

 cation of photography to the delineation and measurement of celestial 

 objects, an application which has now received such great extension. 

 He was one of the party who went to Spain, in 1860, to observe a 

 total solar eclipse, and he took up the department of observation by 

 photography. His results formed the subject of a Bak3rian lecture, 

 and are published in the ' Philosophical Transactions ' for 1862. 

 They threw much light on the subject of the solar prominences, 

 then, we may say, in its infancy. He devoted much attention to the 

 subject of Sun-spots, and constructed an elaborate machine for their 

 measurement on photographic negatives under the microscope. 

 Several of our Fellows have had the opportunity of seeing the beauti- 

 ful experiments on electric discharges in rarefied gases which he 

 carried out by means of his magnificent battery of 15,000 chloride 

 of silver cells, the use of which, with his usual urbanity, he accorded 

 to men of science who might be desirous of investigating some point 

 requiring the aid of so costly an appliance. 



Charles James Blasius Williams, who died last March, at a very 

 advanced age, was, with one exception, the senior of our Fellows, 

 having been elected in 1835. For many years one of the most 

 prominent physicians in London, after retirement from medical 



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