“I cannot continue the quotation without material change. ‘That increase of years to him has been but increase of wisdom,’ may, indeed be said of Roscoe no less than of Dalton; but we are happy to know that we are now contemplating not the diminished strength of the close, but the manly vigor of the midcourse of a distinguished career. Long and prosperously may it go on from strength to strength. “In general, praise of the address which we have had the pleasure of hearing would not be particularly becoming from one whose chemistry nearly ended as well as began with the simple atomic theory of Dalton. But there is one topic which I may properly speak of, standing as I do as a representative of those favored individuals which your programme, for lack of a better distinguishing word, calls ‘foreigners.’ I refer to the urgently expressed ‘hope that this meeting may be the commencement of an international scientific organization.’ For this we thank you, Mr. President, most heartily. This is, indeed, a consummation devoutly to be wished, and confidently to be hoped for by all of us, especially by those for whom I am speaking. “Not only we Americans, who are of British descent, and who never forget that blood is thicker than water, but as well our Continental associates on this platform, of the various strains of blood which, interfused, have produced this English race and fitted it for its noble issues,--we, each and all, I repeat, accept this name of ‘foreigners’ only in the conventional sense which the imperfection of the language imposes. In the forum of science we ignore it altogether. One purpose unifies and animates every scientific mind with ‘one divine intent,’ and that by no means the ‘far-off intent’ of which the poet sings, but one very near and pervading. So we took to heart the closing words of your president’s most pertinent and timely address. Indeed, we had taken them to heart in anticipation, and so have come to this meeting, one hundred strong or more (in place of the ordinary score) fully bent upon making this Manchester meeting international. “Far back in my youthful days there was a strong-willed President of the United States, of military antecedents, who once drew up and promulgated an official order which somewhat astounded his cabinet officers. ‘Why, Mr. President,’ they said, ‘you can’t do that.’ ‘Can’t do it?’ replied General Jackson; ‘Don’t you see that I have done it?’ And so we internationals have come and done it. I am the unworthy spokesman of such a numerous and such a distinguished array of scientific foreigners as have never been assembled before. Next year, if you will, you shall have as many more. When you too are ready to cross the Channel or the North Sea, we shall compose only a larger scientific brotherhood. And when you cross again the Atlantic, the brotherhood of science will be the more increased, and its usefulness in proportion. “In behalf of your foreign guests, I heartily second the motion.”