At Johannesburg he gave the second half of his Address. Then on by Bloemfontein, Kimberley, Bulawayo, to the Victoria Falls, where a bridge had to be opened. Then to Portuguese Africa on September 16, 17, where he made speeches in French and English. Finally he arrived at Suez on October 4, and got home October 18.
It was generally agreed that his Presidentship was a conspicuous success. The following appreciation is from the obituary notice in The Observatory, January 1913, p. 58:
The Association visited a dozen towns, and at each halt its President addressed an audience partly new, and partly composed of people who had been travelling with him for many weeks. At each place this latter section heard with admiration a treatment of his subject wholly fresh and exactly adapted to the locality.
Such duties are always trying, and it should not be forgotten that tact was necessary in a country which only two years before was still in the throes of war.
In the autumn he received the honour of being made a K.C.B. The distinction was doubly valued as being announced to him by his friend Mr. Balfour, then Prime Minister.
From 1899 to 1900 he was President of the Royal Astronomical Society. One of his last Presidential acts was the presentation of the Society’s Medal to his friend M. Poincaré.
He had the unusual distinction of serving twice as President of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, once in 1890–92 and again 1911–12.
In 1891 he gave the Bakerian Lecture [182a] of the Royal Society, his subject being “Tidal Prediction.” This annual prælection dates from 1775, and the list of lecturers is a distinguished roll of names.
In 1897 he lectured at the Lowell Institute at Boston, and this was the origin of his book on Tides, published in the following year. Of this Sir Joseph Larmor says [182b] that “it has taken rank with the semi-popular writings of Helmholtz and Kelvin as a model of what is possible in the exposition of a scientific subject.” It has passed through three English editions, and has been translated into many foreign languages.