1887 .] 
Chairman's Address. 
9 
the views of professional gentlemen near me, I venture to think 
that the Edinburgh Observatory could be made more useful by 
being maintained in its present position than by being made over 
to the University of Edinburgh, according to the Government pro- 
posals of last session. But whether it is to.be kept up as a national 
or as an academic institution, let us urge on the Government the 
duty of making it efficient, by providing the astronomer wuth the 
necessary instrumental appliances. 
I have now to open the business of the Session by presenting the 
Victoria Jubilee Prize to our President, Sir William Thomson. 
2. The Jubilee Prize. 
The Chairman, on presenting the Victoria Jubilee Prize to Sir 
William Thomson, said : — 
The Council of this Society, at their meeting on the 15 th of July 
last, approved of the following Eeport by their Committee : — The 
Committee appointed to recommend the first award of the Victoria 
Jubilee Prize, having taken into consideration the terms of the 
foundation of the Victoria Jubilee Prize, were of opinion that the 
Council, in making their first award, ought to give the prize for 
work already done, especially as the Transactions and Proceedings 
of the Society contain evidence of a large amount of valuable 
scientific work contributed by gentlemen connected with Scotland 
during the past three years. 
Having gone over the list of papers during that period, and con- 
sidered suggestions regarding the experimental work which had 
been in progress during the prescribed period, the Committee 
resolved to recommend to the Council that the prize should be 
awarded to Professor Sir William Thomson, P.B.S.E., for a re- 
markable series of papers on Hydrokinetics, especially on Waves 
and Vortices, which have been for some time, and are still being 
communicated to the Society. 
Sir William Thomson has worked at Hydrokinetics almost since 
he began to publish. 
Some remarkable papers of his on the Bounding Surface, and 
on the Vis-Viva of a moving liquid, appeared in the Cambridge 
and Dublin Mathematical Journal. 
