Lord Rayleigh delivered the Presidential address at the Montreal meeting
of the British Association on Wednesday, to some 1,600 members. We cannot, of course, pretend to give any summary of it here, however meagre. It was one of great interest to electricians, and not at all devoid of interest to those who know nothing of electricity exoept what they can gather from the most ordinary sources of intelligence. Referring to the progress made since Faraday's time in the discovery and improvement of the dynamo-machine, Lord Rayleigh said, that looking back at the course of the discovery now, it almost seemed that the progress ought to have been much more rapid than it was, and that the difficulty lay in "want of faith." As it was known that electrical power could easily be transformed into mechanical power, it might have been seen at once that mechanical power could be transformed into electrical, and that so the great expense of the chemical generation of electricity might have been spared. It was not, however, the needs of practical science which had chiefly prepared the way for electrical progress. The discovery of the mode of producing a vacuum as perfect as the incandescent lamp requires, could never have been made, but for the disinterested researches of an army of scientific investigators. Indeed, the advantage taken by speculators of the confidence of the public in science, was one of the chief discouragements to this sort of investigation. Nevertheless, the requirements of the arts often react in the most healthy manner on the progress of the science, and even now, the problem of the best mode of lighting by elec- tricity is leading to exact measurements of electrical power which must prove of the greatest possible advantage to the science.
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