1895 - 96 .] 
Chairman's Opening Address. 
15 
ends : — to the popularisation of science ; to the development and 
organisation of scientific education; and to the endless series of 
battles and skirmishes over evolution.’ 5 Despite these modest 
remarks, we all know that his original investigations alone have 
given him a distinguished place among British biologists. He was 
elected a Fellow of our Society in 1876. 
We have also lost the genial Professor Blackie. Bom in 
Glasgow in 1809, he was appointed successively to the Chair of 
Latin Literature in Aberdeen, and to the Chair of Greek in 
Edinburgh. It has been said of him : “ There was no winter in 
his year, no sorrow in his song. He was a perennial fountain of 
sweetness and light. There never came a frost keen enough to 
freeze the silvery column as it rose, nor a wind strong enough to 
break into drift its melodious fall.” He contributed several papers 
to the Transactions of this Society ; and his enthusiasm for the 
language of Greece in its ancient and modern phases gave a keen 
zest to the communications on the subject with which he favoured 
us. He became a Fellow of the Society in 1863, and died on 2nd 
March of the present year. 
Arthur Cayley was born at Richmond, Surrey, on 16th August 
1821. He graduated at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1842, was 
called to the bar in 1849, and became Sadlerian Professor of Pure 
Mathematics at Cambridge in 1863. Those who are capable of 
appreciating his work say of him, that “ while he was cosmopolitan 
in his mathematics, he was a master in every branch.” Perhaps 
he will be best remembered as the creator of an entirely new 
branch of mathematics, by his discovery of the Theory of 
Invariants. The Royal Society’s Catalogue contains the titles of 
724 papers by Cayley, down to 1883. He became an Honorary 
Fellow of our Society in 1865, and died on January 26th of the 
present year. 
James Dwight Dana was bom on 12th February 1813 at Utica, 
U.S. of America. His appointment as mathematical instructor of 
midshipmen in the U.S. navy gave him opportunities of travelling 
which he used to the best advantage. He subsequently became 
Mineralogist and Geologist to the U.S. Exploring Expedition 
which was to circumnavigate the globe, under the command of 
Charles Wilkes. In the course of the voyage his party had to 
