EDITOR'S TABLE. 



771 



opposition to his old friend Brewster 

 and others, and was elected to the po- 

 sition at the age of twenty-four. He 

 was an original investigator in a wide 

 field of physics, contributed to the ex- 

 tension of knowledge in many direc- 

 tions, and was an able writer. His 

 health failing, he resigned his chair in 

 the Edinburgh University, and accept- 

 ed the principalship of St. Andrew's, 

 and is therefore known as Principal 

 Forbes. He died the last day of 1868, 

 and an elaborate biography, by three 

 of his Scotch friends, has just been pub- 

 lished by Macmillan, which is an ex- 

 tremely interesting book. 



Among other subjects of his inves- 

 tigation were the glaciers, upon which 

 he published an important volume. He 

 met Agassiz in the Alps, while that 

 gentleman was experimenting upon 

 glacial motions, and they made obser- 

 vations together, but subsequently fell 

 out with each other about the division 

 of the honors of discovery. The com- 

 plication extended, involving the claims 

 of Bishop Bendu, Prof. Guyot, and 

 others. In his " Glaciers of the Alps," 

 published in 1860, Prof. Tyndall under- 

 took to do justice to the claims of all 

 parties. Prof. Forbes was not satisfied 

 with the awards, and replied to Prof. 

 Tyndall's work, vindicating his own 

 claims to a larger share of the investi- 

 gation than had been accorded him. To 

 this Prof. Tyndall at the time made no 

 rejoinder ; but in his recently-published 

 "Forms of "Water " he restated the 

 case in a way that was not satisfactory 

 to Forbes's biographers, who have met 

 it by an appendix to the volume. In 

 the Contemporary Revieio for August, 

 Prof. Tyndall returns to the question 

 in an elaborate paper, entitled " Prin- 

 cipal Forbes and his Biographers," of 

 which we publish the first and last 

 portions, that are of most general 

 interest. e have not space for the 

 whole article, which is long, and omit- 

 ted the extended extracts from Rendu's 

 work in French, and that portion of 



the argument which will mainly con- 

 cern the special students of glacial lit- 

 erature. In an introductory note to 

 the article, Prof. Tyndall briefly states 

 the origin and cause of the controversy, 

 and earnestly deprecates its present re- 

 vival. He says, speaking of the biogra- 

 phers : "lam challenged to meet their 

 criticisms, which, I find, are considered 

 to be conclusive by some able public 

 journals and magazines. Thus the at- 

 titude of a controversialist is once more 

 forced upon me. Since the death of 

 Principal Forbes no one has heard me 

 utter a word inconsistent with tender- 

 ness for his memory ; and it is with an* 

 unwillingness amounting to repugnance 

 that I now defend myself across his 

 grave. His biographers profess to 

 know what he would have done were 

 he alive, and hold themselves to be the 

 simple executors of his will. I cannot 

 act entirely upon this assumption, or 

 deal with the dead as I should with 

 the living. Hence, though these pages 

 may appear to some to be sufficiently 

 full, they lack the completeness, and 

 still more the strength, which I should 

 have sought to confer upon them had 

 my present position been forced upon 

 me by Principal Forbes himself instead 

 of by his friends." 



It is to be feared that Prof. Forbes 

 did not sufficiently abide by the rule 

 of life which was formed under the 

 solemn circumstances of his father's 

 death. 



e commend to the attention of 

 our scientific readers, with philosophi- 

 cal inclinations, the series of articles 

 on "The Primary Concepts of Modern 

 Physical Science," the first of which 

 appears this month, on "The Theory 

 of the Atomic Constitution of Matter." 

 The depth and force of the criticism are 

 only equalled by the clearness of the 

 conceptions, and the precision and 

 felicity of the statement. The interest 

 of the discussion will not be lessened 



