of Edinburgh, Session 1878-79. 
35 
It is most gratifying to me to know that you and other old friends 
still thought of me as a successor to Sir David Brewster [in the 
Principalship of the University]. That , of course, I at once 
surrendered. It was the last remaining rag of worldly ambition 
which remained to me, and I surrendered it cheerfully.” 
I have selected Forbes out of the many who are called up to 
memory by a reference to what I said in this place twenty years ago, 
both because he is most vividly associated in my mind with this 
room and this Society, and because he is about the very best type I 
could select of a man who derives benefit from the associations 
connected with a Society like this, and who in his turn reflects those 
benefits most powerfully on others. The solitary paper which I 
have mentioned as the sole product in our Transactions of the 
Session, was an early product of a mind lit up by a spark from 
Forbes’s anvil. Balfour Stewart had been a worker in Forbes’s 
workshop, and had imbibed much of the spirit of his master. He 
is now one of our Honorary Members ; a fact which sufficiently ex- 
presses the opinion of this Society of the manner in which he has 
been doing his work. It would not become me to pursue the sub- 
ject of the influence of one mind upon another, due to their close 
contact, by singling out some of the fervent workers in this Society as 
the insensible creations of the good men who have lived before them. 
The fact is patent. Good men have raised up good men to succeed 
them. Our Transactions of the present period contain papers not 
a few destined to take their place in the permanent repertories of 
science. We have about us workers whose praise is wide spread, 
but this is not the place to sound it. The only word I can venture 
on as both encouraging for the present and hopeful for the future, 
is the remarkable number of young men who are just entering on 
their work. In the fasciculus of the Society’s Proceedings just 
issued, I count not less than eleven names of young men just enter- 
ing on their career of investigation. How many of them have 
caught their inspiration from contact with those older workers 
who have been long among us ! How many have been drawn out 
and cheered on by the associations of this room ! 
