1882.] 



President's Address. 



303 



his life is now being written by faithful hands. Bnt I consider it no 

 common piece of fortnne to have lived within easy distance of his 

 honse : to have been able by a short pilgrimage to enjoy his bright 

 welcome, and his genial conversation, and to revive from time to time 

 a mental picture of that my ideal of the philosophic life. 



Of Balfour I knew far less, and his works are beyond my range 

 of knowledge. But such was the fascination of his speech and his 

 demeanour that to have seen him was to desire to know him better. 

 To have been selected- at his age as one of the Secretaries of the 

 British Association, a post usually reserved for men of more advanced 

 years and of longer experience, to have been appointed to a professor- 

 ship founded almost on the basis of his own work, and thereby to have 

 become the coadjutor of his own great master in the Physiological 

 School at Cambridge, and all this without one word of cavil or of 

 criticism, was a high testimony to his scientific eminence. But far 

 wider afield, it will be remembered of him, not so much that he was 

 brilliant in intellect, or keen of insight, or varied in his attainments, 

 but that he always found himself among friends, whether in college 

 or in the laboratory, in his own home over the northern border, or on 

 the wild mountain side where he breathed his last. 



The list of deceased Fellows comprises other eminent names, many 

 of whom will receive mention in our obituary notices. The list, more- 

 over, serves again to exemplify the variety of qualifications which 

 have opened our doors to election. In Decimus Burton we find an 

 architect of refined taste and cultivated mind ; in Stanley Jevons and 

 William Newmarch statisticians of weight, and the former already an 

 authority on political and other philosophy ; in Sir Woodbine Parish 

 a geographer, and more than a geographer, a man who by service as 

 well as by study in foreign lands had acquired an unusual amount of 

 first hand and accurate information ; in Scott Russell an engineer 

 whose brilliant early strokes of work will be remembered when the 

 difficulties which entangled his later efforts have been long for- 

 gotten ; in Dr. Robinson a veteran and mentor in science, whose work 

 and whose judgment were alike sound. Of Sir Wyville Thomson 

 mention will be made elsewhere. 



To this list of names there was well nigh added yet another, 

 namely, my owd . An accident, under circumstances which the issue of 

 events and more mature reflection have shown that I was hardly 

 justified in incurring, has for some time past interfered materially 

 with my usual avocations in life, and thereby, as I fear, with my use- 

 fulness to the Society. But the ready and efficient assistance of the 

 other officers has, I doubt not, gone far to supply the deficiency. For 

 myself, I am consoled by the kind expression of sympathy from 

 many, some even unknown, friends ; and by the consideration, ever- 

 present to my mind, that, except through a combination of circum- 



