Society; with Professor Brande, the pupil and successor of Davy, at the Royal Institution, long time one of the Secretaries of the Royal Society, an early President of the Chemical Society, and, in his professional capacity, Director of the Die Department at the Royal Mint; with Sir Robert Christison, of Edinburgh, one of the most scientific of British toxicologists and pharmacologists, an original worker in many fields of inquiry, President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and a selected, though not an actual. President of the British Association; with Dr. Warren de la Rue, the friend of us all, more than once President of the Chemical Society, and a Vice-President, Medalist, and Bakerian Lecturer of the Royal Society; with Dr. Hoffmann, the first Professor at the College of Chemistry, and Assayer for many years to the Mint, one who can claim so many of us as his pupils, and who, as a professional chemist, no less than as an investigator and teacher, ever set an example of energy and vivacity to all his associates, working on one occasion the long night through in order to extract from paraffine-oil a specimen of benzene, ready for exhibition in court on the following morning, an instance of professional devotion which, as the presence of my immediate predecessor, Sir Frederick Abel, reminds me, is not wholly without a parallel. Proceeding in my enumeration, I may mention Sir Robert Kane, then of Cork, a teacher and worker of originality and wide erudition, to whom chemists are indebted for their now familiar conception of amidogen; also Dr. Allen Miller, Professor at King's College, London, and Assayer to the Mint, a President of the Chemical Society, and for many years Treasurer of the Royal Society; also Sir Lyon Playfair, then Professor of Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh, now a member of her Majesty's Privy Council and President of the British Association, one to whom we are indebted for his hearty sympathy with the objects of the Institute, and for the unsparing exercise of his efforts and influence on our behalf; also my relative by marriage, Alfred Smee, a pioneer in electro-metallurgy, and inventor of the galvanic battery by which for the third of a century the greater part of the galvano-plastic work of this country has been effected; and lastly, Robert Warington, chemist for many years to the Society of Apothecaries, the founder and first Secretary of the Chemical Society, and a frequent contributor thereto of his characteristically ingenious observations. And not only with the above-named eminent men of science, but with many others also, has it been my fortune to be professionally associated, including, I regretfully have to add among those who have passed away from us, some of the most distinguished original members and warmest friends of the Institute, as Dr. Stenhouse, Sir William Siemens, Professor Way, Dr. Angus Smith, Dr. Voelcker, and Mr. Walter Weldon. Moreover, among the leading men of science of the present day. Sir Frederick Abel, Mr. Crookes, Professor Dewar, Professor Frankland, Mr. Vernon Harcourt, Dr. Tyndall, and Dr. Williamson, are either the holders of
