JULIUS ROBERT MAYER. 407 



that there is no determination whatever of the mechanical equivalent 

 of heat in the above table." 



We have no space to go further into the particulars of this contro- 

 versy, which was as discreditable to the assailants of Mayer as it was 

 honorable to his disinterested defender. It is to be remembered that 

 on all occasions, and in the most emphatic way, Professor Tyndall bore 

 his testimony to the greatness of Dr. Joule's work, and deprecated 

 every construction of his efforts which assumed that he was exalting 

 the German at the expense of the Englishman. His demand was that 

 Dr. Mayer be accorded a distinguished place among the founders of 

 the modern doctrine of forces such a place as he was incontestably 

 entitled to by the scope, originality, and earliness of his work. But 

 his opponents would allow the German doctor no merit whatever as a 

 pioneer or discoverer, and no place in the circle of eminent men who 

 created the new epoch of dynamical philosophy. The attack, however, 

 upon Mayer signally failed of its intended purpose, and the parties 

 who made it had the mortification of seeing that their ungenerous 

 exertions were overruled to an end very different from that which they 

 had designed. After the sifting and probing which followed the 

 onslaught of the Scotchmen, the claims in behalf of Mayer were uni- 

 versally recognized as just; he was chosen by acclamation a member of 

 the French Academy of Sciences, and the award of the Copley medal 

 in 1871, the highest honor in the gift of the Royal Society of Eng- 

 land, was the sharp rebuke of British Science to the unworthy efforts 

 incited by a spurious patriotism to depreciate an illustrious foreign 

 savant. 



Dr. Mayer, as we have intimated, was a man of much suffering, 

 which was undoubtedly aggravated by the neglect and injustice with 

 which his labors were treated ; and, when generous recognition of his 

 services was made, the good effect on his disordered mind was palpable. 

 It was while he was in the asylum, under treatment, that the Copley 

 medal with Tyndall's accompanying letter was put into his hands. Dr. 

 Miilburger, the attending physician, remarked, " I can still see him as 

 he entered my room, beaming with gladness, to exhibit to me this rare 

 distinction." 



A monument is to be erected to Mayer at Heilbronn, and the scien- 

 tific men of different countries are adding their contributions to those 

 of his townsmen for the purpose of its erection. 



