118 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 
the present occasion therefore devolves upon me. The occa- 
sion, although an opening one as regards you, being thus a 
closing one as regards me, naturally suggests that the subject 
of my address should be of a retrospective nature ; and so it 
has usually been considered by my predecessors in this office. 
The kind of retrospection, however, which of late years has 
formed the subject of their addresses, has, alas ! almost exclu- 
sively been the funeral orations of eminent members removed 
from us by death during the previous year. Year after year 
death has gone on picking one by one the best (though not 
always the ripest) fruit from among us. One year it was 
Edward Forbes ; the next year it was Hugh Miller ; the year 
after, Dr Fleming ; and it was clear that no President would 
have well fulfilled his duty who, in his address, had passed 
over the deaths of such eminent members of our body without 
a suitable record and eloge. Owing to the importance of these 
losses, this species of retrospection has necessarily been pre- 
vented from falling into arrear. And now, when, thanks be 
to God, we have had a momentary respite, and have passed 
over another year without having such another limb lopped 
off, the President of the day can turn to another kind of 
retrospection, which has fallen into arrear, or, I should rather 
say, which has never, since the revival of the Society, been 
begun to be brought up. Not that we have no losses during 
the past year to deplore, but that those which have been 
sustained are of members who, however able and regretted by 
us all, have not occupied that space in the public eye, nor 
achieved that amount of eminence in science which distin- 
guished the members whose names I have just mentioned. 
Thus had I written, gentlemen, when, on entering this room, 
I find my congratulations dashed to the ground by the melan- 
choly intelligence of the death of Professor George Wilson, 
which has just been communicated to me. Although not now 
one of our working members, we cannot forget that Professor 
Wilson was formerly one of our Presidents, and that of late 
he has been one of the foremost men in our scientific world in 
Edinburgh. The loss will be felt both as a public and a 
private one. His genial and amiable disposition endeared 
him to his friends and acquaintances ; his abilities and attain- 
