wife (née Hope) and was of the family of the "Martyr Bishop Hooper." He was admitted to the legal profession in 1846 at the age of sixteen, first as articled clerk and then as conveyancer, with a firm of solicitors at Bristol, and had much to do with railway work when it was extended to the West of England, and was a friend of Brunel, Forbes, and other great railway men. In 1856, he came to reside in Torquay and became a partner with Mr. Charles Bayly, who died in 1857. In that year Mr. Hooper was appointed solicitor to the Local Board; and in 1867, Clerk to the Board, which appointment he held till 1889. He retained the position of legal adviser to the Local Board from 1889 to 1892, when that body ceased to exist, and he was then elected Borough Solicitor to the Town Council, which succeeded the Local Board. He determined his official connection with the town on 1 November, 1894. During his long service of thirty-eight years he was instrumental in and identified with many undertakings which tended to the advantage of the town, such as the Tottiford Waterworks and the main drainage scheme, and the acquisition of the various pleasure grounds and walks by the town authorities.

On the death of Mr. Bayly in 1857, Mr. Hooper was joined by Mr. J. W. Grant Wollen as partner, and of late years his son, Mr. H. Dundee Hooper and Mr. Wollen s son, Mr. Cecil Wollen, have been his partners, but Mr. Briscoe Hooper continued in active private practice to the day of his death, retaining a wonderful memory and acumen which caused him to have a very large and confidential clientele.

In the early "'sixties" he became connected with the volunteer movement and rose to the command of the Torquay Artillery Volunteers, which he held for some years.

He joined the Association in 1872 and took a great interest in its work, as well as in the county of his adoption and the town in which he resided.

Mr. Hooper married in 1858 Antonia, only daughter of Capt. Edward Dundee, 47th Foot, and by her had one son. He died suddenly of heart failure on 2 June, 1914, at his residence Bournbrook, at the age of eighty-four years.

JOHN WILLIAMS MATTHEWS. Mr. Matthews, who joined the Association in 1896, was a native of Tavistock, and senior partner of the firm of Rooker, Matthews & Co.,

Solicitors, of Plymouth, which firm he joined in 1864. He held several public appointments in Plymouth, among others that of Clerk to the Board of Guardians and Superintendent Registrar of Births, Deaths, and Marriages. Of a generous disposition, he was a supporter of many charities. He also took an active part in promoting the two restorations of St. Andrew's Church, Plymouth, first under the direction of Mr. James Hine and again under Sir Gilbert Scott, and was one of the founders of St. Andrew's Elementary Schools. When the Western Morning News was launched on 3 January, 1860, Mr. Matthews became one of the shareholders and directors and for many years took an active part in the management of that, the first daily newspaper in Plymouth. He died on 4 April, 1914, at the age of eighty-six, leaving a widow (who was a Miss Coryndon), three sons and a daughter.

CHARLES EDWARD ROWE. Mr. Rowe, who joined the Association in 1912, was a native of St. Just in Cornwall, and took an active part in the commercial and civic life of Exeter, in which city he settled in 1851. He was the head of the well-known lead and glass firm of Rowe Brothers of Exeter, with agencies in several continental cities, a Justice of the Peace, and former Mayor of Exeter. died on 11 January, 1914, at the age of sixty-five.

He

THE RT. HONBLE. LORD SIDMOUTH. William Wells Addington, third Viscount Sidmouth, who joined the Association in 1898, was the son of the Rev. and Hon. W. Leonard Addington, afterwards second Viscount, and grandson of Mr. Henry Addington, the first Viscount, who had the distinction of being the youngest Speaker of the House of Commons. The third Viscount was born at Scotsbridge near Rickmansworth, Herts, on 25 March, 1824, and spent his early days in the Royal Navy, obtaining his lieutenant's commission in 1846 and retiring after a service of eleven years in 1848, when he married Georgina Susan, daughter of the Hon. and Very Rev. G. W. Pellew, D.D., Dean of Norwich. As the Hon. W. Addington, he represented Devizes in Parliament in 1863-64, and was the last survivor of the first nine officers who received Volunteer Commissions from Queen Victoria, on the inauguration of the movement in 1852.

He took an active part in public life, was a D.L., and

J.P. for Devon and J.P. for Somerset, as well, and was greatly interested in all Church questions and was a member of the Church Reform League. He died at Bournemouth in the ninetieth year of his age, on 28 October, 1913, sincerely regretted by all who knew him and especially by those associated with the parish of Upottery, in which his residence, the Manor House, is situated.

JOHN STEVENS, who died on 22 March, 1914, at his residence 50 St. David's Hill, Exeter, was born at St. Erth, Cornwall, in 1850, and joined the Association in 1901, and was elected a member of the Council in 1912.

About the year 1894 he commenced to use the microscope and very soon devoted himself with great enthusiasm to the study of the Rotifera. It is a matter for congratulation that the results of his labours in this field of research were embodied in a paper published in the Transactions of the Association for 1912. Two hundred and seventeen species were there recorded for Devon, including one (Distyla stokesii) new to Britain.

Mr. Stevens was for many years an active member of the Exeter University College Field Club, and took a constant interest in the work of the Royal Albert Memorial Museum. He joined the Quekett Club in 1899, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society in 1904.

The personal qualities of Mr. Stevens endeared him to all those with whom he was brought into contact. He was an ardent lover of Nature, always ready to assist a brother naturalist to the utmost of his ability. Many friends will long cherish the memory of his sunny, unselfish and hospitable disposition.

ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT,

A. M. WORTHINGTON, C.B., F.R.S.

21st JULY, 1914.

IN casting about me for a subject on which I could hope to say anything that might conceivably be worth your attention, I have reflected that we members of the Devonshire Association have to spend our lives, for the most part, removed from the active centres of scientific research and discussion, whose echoes reach us only faintly or occasionally through such scientific books, reviews, or papers as we may find time or ability to read, and I have thought that it might possibly be of service to those of you who may have had less time or opportunity than I have myself enjoyed if I endeavoured to trace how, in the quarter of a century that has exactly elapsed since this Association last met in Tavistock, some of the chief advances have been effected in those branches of natural science with which my own studies have been connected, and what the significance of these advances seems to be in connection with the picture that scientific men draw for us of the Physical Universe round about us. In that way I venture to hope that I may be fulfilling the object of a Presidential Address to a Society which has for one of its professed aims, "to promote the intercourse of those who cultivate science, literature, and art in different parts of Devonshire, with one another and with others."

In any such attempt it will be impossible for me to venture outside what in this country is known as the province of Natural Philosophy, which indeed in its widest sense is taken to include all branches of the study of not-living matter, but even when all biological phenomena are thus excluded the field is still so wide that but few men can now be found who are familiar with more than a few parts of it. Happily, however, anything like a close survey is un

necessary to one who only desires to trace briefly the course of discovery in a selected region.

The quarter of a century in question has been marked by unexampled scientific activity and by almost startling discoveries of the highest importance in almost every branch of knowledge, and I have only to mention such familiar matters as wireless telegraphy, aeroplanes, the kinematograph, the application of the X-rays, and of radium in surgery, the conquest of malarial and yellow fever, all of which fall within the short period I have mentioned, to illustrate the rapidity and the success with which the discoveries of the scientific investigator have been pressed into the service of mankind.

It is not, however, of any of these applications that I desire to speak, but rather of the investigations out of which they sprang, for behind every such application lie the work and achievements of men whose names are for the most part unknown to the general public, unknown, indeed, in many cases to all but a small band of fellowworkers in the same branch of knowledge. History is able to point, in almost every generation, to some few students who have esteemed the study of Nature the most desirable of all pursuits. Some have been wealthy and some poor, but they have all had one thing in common, a noble and insatiable curiosity to penetrate behind the mystery that surrounds us and a confident faith that we have been created with minds to enjoy and reason to aid in the attempt. From the work of these few men has sprung all the progress of applied science, and yet very few ever received much direct payment for their labours-nor, indeed, have they sought it. Faraday, the great discoverer of the principles on which all machines for electric lighting, electric traction, and the transmission of power must rest, died a poor man, although the whole world has been enriched by his discoveries. When pressed by engineers and business men to divert his attention from pure research to the development of his discoveries he said, "I have no time to waste in making money," and we may be proud to-day in having still among us in Devon a scientific man whose eminence is recognized in every capital in Europe where electrical science is studied, and from whose mathematical investigations the whole community has been benefited-I mean, Mr. Oliver Heaviside.

To such men as these the applications of scientific