93 



THE president's ADDHESS. 



Gentlemen, — One of the most important prerogatives and duties be- 

 longing to the Council of this Academy is the award of medals to the 

 successful cultivators of those scientific and literary pursuits for the pro- 

 motion of which the Academy was founded. "We are now assembled for 

 the purpose of carrying into effect resolutions adopted by the Council 

 with reference to this matter towards the close of the past year ; and to 

 give greater solemnity to our proceedings, the representative of the 

 Queen has been pleased to honour our meeting with his presence. 

 He thus adds a fresh proof to the many which he has given of his own 

 earnest sympathy with men of letters. He thus, I believe, exactly reflects 

 the feeling and co-operates with the action of our gracious Sovereign. If 

 Her Majesty is no longer supported by the counsel and aided by the ser- 

 vices of her lamented Consort, we know that she is animated by that 

 strenuous desire to promote the interests of learning which he never 

 lost an opportunity of manifesting. Under our present Sovereign, and 

 under our present Yiceroy, the maxim ^^Sonos alit artes'^ will not be 

 lost sight of. 



I will now proceed, Gentlemen, with your peimission, to notice the 

 several works for which the Council has resolved to confer Cunningham 

 Medals. 



A Cunningham Medal has been awarded to the Be v. Humphrey 

 Lloyd D. D., for his original and important researches in Physical Op- 

 tics, Magnetism, and Meteorology. Every member of the Eoyal Irish 

 Academy will readily admit the high claims of Dr. Lloyd to any 

 honour which we can confer. We all feel, too, that these claims 

 are founded, not only on the scientific eminence which he has so 

 justly attained, but also on the fact that so large a portion of his 

 discoveries have been given to the world through the medium of our 

 Transactions and Proceedings. The first gave him a claim which the 

 whole scientific world would be ready to endorse; the second gives 

 to this claim a new and peculiar force as regards ourselves. And, 

 although the medal which I am about to present to Dr. Lloyd has 

 been conferred on him professedly for memoirs recently published in 

 our Transactions, I am sure that I do not misinterpret the feeling of 

 the Council in saying that, when they resolved to confer it, their 

 thoughts took a wider range, and that they desired thereby to testify 

 their sense of the claims, accumulated during a long period, which 

 Dr. Lloyd possesses on the scientific world generaUy, and more espe- 

 cially on the Eoyal Irish Academy. And you will not think that I 

 misemploy your time, if I venture to transgress the period to which, 

 in the adjudication of these medals, we are in strictness limited, and 

 briefly to notice some of his earlier contributions to phj^sical science. 

 Let me select, as perhaps the most important of these, the experimen- 

 tal proof of the phenomenon of conical refraction. The history of 

 this discovery must be ewr memorable in the annals of science. It 



