held a few days hence at Philadelphia, where you will be again reminded that there are ties which bind together not only the constituent parts of the British empire, but the whole of the British race--ties of mutual sympathy and good-will which such intercourse will strengthen and which, I believe, each succeeding decade will draw more closely and firmly together. (Applause.) I have now only to apologize for having intervened in your proceedings. I feel that what I have said would have come better from the lips of a Canadian. Others will, however, have ample opportunities for supplementing both by word and deed the shortcomings of which I may have been guilty. It was my duty--and I have much pleasure in discharging it--as the representative of the Crown in this part of the empire to bid you in the name of our people a hearty welcome to the Dominion. (Loud and long continued applause.) Sir WM. THOMSON, in responding, said:--You will allow me, in the first place, to offer my warmest thanks to His Excellency the Governor-General for coming among us this evening, and for the very kind and warm welcome which he has offered to the British Association, on the part of the Dominion. Your Excellency, it devolves upon me as representing Professor Cayley, the president of the British Association, to do what I wish he were here to do himself, and which it would have been a well-earned pleasure for him to do--to introduce to you Lord Rayleigh as his successor in the office of President of the British Association. Professor Cayley has devoted his life to the advancement of pure mathematics. It is indeed peculiarly appropriate that he should be followed in the honourable post of president by one who has done so much to apply mathematical power in the various branches of physical science as Lord Rayleigh has done. In the field of the discovery and demonstration of natural phenomena Lord Rayleigh has, above all others enriched physical science by the application of mathematical analysis; and when I speak of mathematics you must not suppose mathematics to be harsh and crabbed. (Laughter.) The Association learned last year at Southport what a glorious realm of beauty there was in pure mathematics. I will not, however, be hard on those who insist that it is harsh and crabbed. In reading some of the pages of the greatest investigators of mathematics one is apt to become wearied, and I must confess that some of the pages of Lord Rayleigh's work have taxed me most severely, but the strain was well repaid. When we pass from the instrument which is harsh and crabbed to those who do not give themselves the trouble to learn it thoroughly, to the application of the instrument, see what a splendid world of light, beauty and music is opened to us through such investigations as those of Lord Rayleigh. His book on sound is the greatest piece of mathematical investigation we know of applied to a branch of physical science. The branches of music are mere developments