A study of the principles of nature / by Frederick Hovenden.

  • Hovenden, Frederick.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A study of the principles of nature / by Frederick Hovenden. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    13/170 (page 1)
    A STUDY OF THE PRINCIPLES OF NATURE LECTURE I Recently the Proprietors of the London Institution did me the honour of electing me to the post of Vice- President. It is a position I much appreciate, and this is the first opportunity I have had for thanking the Proprietors for what they have done. But 1 have no idea of being simply a figure-head of this Society, for I hold that it is my duty to advance the general objects of the Institution if I can possibly do so. I think I can be of value in this direction, and this is the excuse for my lectures. In 1865 I became a Proprietor of the London Institu- tion, and from that time to this I believe I have attended something like eight-tenths of the lectures given. During this period of forty-three years I must have attended about nine hundred lectures. 1 therefore consider that I am a pupil of the London Institution. In the many lectures I have attended, somehow, I have felt a gap in the information given. The details were enormous, but the principles underlying the details were uniformly absent. For nearly thirty years I have been experimenting, not for the purpose of exploiting Nature, which is nearly