410 Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. [sess. 
Professor Tait, on the Theory of Knot Forms, have induced other 
scientists in England, in the United States of America, and on the 
Continent, to follow him in the same department of research, and to 
give to our Society valuable communications on these subjects. I 
think we may also attribute to the same source the revival of 
interest in the abstruse subject of the Quaternion Calculus with 
which the name of my distinguished friend is largely identified. 
It is also pleasing to observe that many papers have been received 
from comparatively young men, who, after distinguishing themselves 
at the university, now hold important appointments in distant 
colonies and dependencies of the Empire and among the old and 
rapidly advancing nations of the extreme East. 
I have now only to announce the conclusion of the public business 
of the session of 1890. 
