The Royal Society 1

Abstract

OUR anniversary is in one sense the opening of a new year, in another it is the close of an old one. With one hand we welcome the coming, whit the other we bid farewell to the departing guest. In the later parts of my present address I shall have to speak, as on former occassions, of our prospects and, hopes for the future. At our more festive gathering in the evening we shall recount some of the victories which have been won over difficulties in the extension of knowledge, and shall rejoice at the gathering of old comrades and friends after our usual period of dispersion. But at the moment of taking my place in the chair to which you have now for the fourth time elected me, I must confess that the sadder side of the picture is the most prominent. We seem almost for the moment to enter the Valley of the Shadow of Death, or, like Dante, to descend to the place of Departed Spirits, and to commune with them once more after they have vanished from the upper world. Each year during my own term of office the numbers lost to us have been greater than the numbers gained; but this year, although the list of deaths is long and comprises not a few distinguished Fellows, they all seem overshadowed by two prominent figures. One of these died in the fulness of years, of honours, and of world-wide reputation; the other in the strength and bouyancy of youth, a buoyancy which appears to have even contributed to his end.