62 



Anniversary Meeting. 



[Nov. 30, 



within tlie period of Sir Joseph Banks' presidency, while Black's work 

 was but a score years earlier. We are as it were but two Presidents 

 -off the budding of modern chemistry, as of many another stately 

 growth of the tree of natural knowledge. 



Sir Edward Sabine's long services to this Society, first as Treasurer 

 and then as President, deserve more than a passing allusion ; but for 

 a due appreciation of them, no less than of his great labours in 

 terrestrial magnetism, I must refer you to our obituary notices. 



By the unexpected death of Professor Henry John Stephen Smith 

 the University of Oxford lost one of the most distinguished, as he 

 was one of the most influential, among those who have guided its 

 destinies during this generation, and a capacity of the first order, 

 not yet weakened by the touch of time, has disappeared from the ranks 

 of the foremost mathematicians of Europe. 



As Chairman of the Meteorological Committee, Professor Smith 

 rendered invaluable services to that body ; and we have all a grateful 

 recollection of the readiness with which his knowledge and sagacity 

 were brought to our aid in Council and in Committee. 



Eor the rest, I dare add nothing to that which has been said of him 

 by our late President in that just and loving appreciation of his friend, 

 which is now touched with a sadder gravity and a deeper pathos. 



It is difficult to say of Professor Smith whether he was more remark- 

 able as a man of affairs, of society, of letters, or of science ; but it is 

 certain that the scientific facet of his brilliant intelligence was alto- 

 gether directed towards those intelligible forms which people the 

 most ethereal regions of abstract knowledge. Tn Sir William Siemens, 

 who, but the other day, was suddenly snatched from among us, we 

 had a no less marked example of vast energy, large scientific acquire- 

 ments, and intellectual powers of a high order, no less completely 

 devoted, in the main, to the application of science to industry. 



I believe I am expressing the opinion of those most competent to 

 judge, when I say that Sir William Siemens had no superior in 

 fertility and ingenuity of invention; that hardly any living man so 

 thoroughly combined an extensive knowledge of scientific principles 

 with the power of applying them in a commer cially successful 

 manner; and that the value of his numerous inventions must be 

 measured, not merely by the extent to which they have increased the 

 wealth and convenience of mankind, but by the favourable reaction 

 on the progress of pure science which they, like all such inventions, 

 have exerted, and will continually exert. 



Time compels me to be but brief in alluding to the remainder of 

 our long list of deaths. But I may not omit to mention that we 

 have lost a distinguished mathematician in Professor Challis ; in 

 Mr. James Young, a chemist whose skilful application of theory to 

 practice established a new industry; in Mr. Cromwell Varley, an 



