Address / by Freeland Fergus, M.D., F.F.P.S.G., F.R.S.E., President, delivered before the Society on 4th November, 1908, at the opening of Session 1908-1909.

  • Fergus, A. Freeland (Andrew Freeland), 1858-1932.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Address / by Freeland Fergus, M.D., F.F.P.S.G., F.R.S.E., President, delivered before the Society on 4th November, 1908, at the opening of Session 1908-1909. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    [From the Proceedings of the Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow.] Address by Freeland Fergus, M.D., F.F.P.S.G., F.R.S.E.,, President, delivered before the Society on 4th November, 1908, at the opening of Session 1908-1909. Part I.—Present Position and P?'ospects of the Royal Philosophical' Society of Glasgow. Gentlemen,—When you did me the honour to elect me to the Presidentship of this Society I felt that you had relieved me of a considerable burden. After all, the success or failure of any Society depends perhaps more on its Secretary than on any of its other officials. For eleven years I discharged, in some fashion, the duties of the Honorary Secretaryship, and I think it right here and now to say that any success which attended my efforts on behalf of the Society was largely due to the zeal, to the efficiency, and to the intelligence with which the duties of the Acting Secre¬ tary were discharged by Mr Angus M‘Lean now Principal of the Technical College, Paisley, and more recently by our esteemed friend Professor Peter Bennett. When I took up the Honorary Secretaryship it was merely as a stop-gap, an arrangement to last for only a few months, a post which I was walling to fill for a short time as a sort of act of filial piety, for I remembered with gratitude how singularly this Society had honoured and trusted my late father. Little did I realise that for 11 years I wrould be actively engaged as Honorary Secretary in the administration of its affairs, and that, with a generosity of wThich I confess I am not worthy, you would reward my labours by electing me your President. Some of the recollections of my early boyhood are connected with this Society. So far back as the year 1871 I attended its. meetings, for at that time my father took an active part in its affairs, and after school hours I was often employed in carrying along books and manuscripts and various munitions of war to help him in the fray. I remember well in these days Sir William Thomson and Professor Grant as Presidents, and Mr William Keddie as Secretary. The few members of the Society who have been connected with it long enough to remember Mr Keddie will, I am sure, agree with me when I say that it is almost impossible