ADDRESS 
AT THE OPENING OF THE SESSION 1878-79. 
BY DR. ROBERT OXLAND, F.C.S., 
President. 
Mr. Vice-President, Ladies and Gentlemen, 
I have the pleasant duty of congratulating } r ou on your 
presence at the inauguration of the sixty-sixth lecturing session of 
our Institution, which I think we may venture to hope, from the 
programme of lectures already issued, will not fail in accomplishing 
some of the best objects of our Society. 
The lapse of two-thirds of a century has swept away all the 
original members of the Society. I believe that there is not now 
one living, though Mr. G. W. Soltau, whose father lectured on 
"Agriculture," March 28th, 1816, was present at the early meetings. 
Of all the goodly band that initiated our proceedings we have now 
but a few mournful portraits, or, better still, records of their works. 
The Rev. J. Fletcher, who lectured Dec. 2nd and 9th, 1813, on 
" Oxygen and its Combinations," is but recently deceased. 
How great have been the changes that have taken place since 
the year 1812, when the first meetings were held at the residences 
of Messrs. Soltau, Ogg, and other gentlemen;* or even since the 
year 1819, when this building was finished and first used for 
meeting. Not only has the immediate neighbourhood been altered, 
but the whole world has been revolutionized, physically and morally, 
with the happiest effects. It has now become comparatively a very 
small space. The march of events has been so rapid that, at least 
as far as history will serve us, we may venture to say that in no 
equal period of time have such momentous changes taken place as 
* "Annual Reports of Institution," vol. i. p. 3. 
