JOSEPH LOVERING. 375 



So also Mr. R. W. Emerson published the following notice in " The 

 Dial " : •' We rejoice in the appearance of the first number of this 

 quarterly journal edited by Professor Peirce. Iuto its mathemat- 

 ics we have not ventured ; but the chapters on Astronomy and 

 Physics we read with great advantage and refreshment. Espe- 

 cially we thank Professor Lovering for the beautiful essay on the 

 ' Internal Equilibrium and Motion of Bodies,' which is the most 

 agreeable contribution to scientific literature which has fallen under 

 our eye since Sir Charles Bell's work on the hand, and brings to 

 mind the clear, transparent writings of Davy and Playfair." 



Professor Lovering was not a writer of books, but he was an 

 editor of very large experience. He was co-editor with our late 

 colleague, Professor Benjamin Peirce, of the " Cambridge Miscel- 

 lany of Mathematics, Physics, aud Astronomy," published at Cam- 

 bridge in 1842 and 1843, and devoted to pure and applied math- 

 ematics. He edited fifteen volumes of the Proceedings of the 

 American Association for the Advancement of Science, also six 

 volumes of the Memoirs and three volumes of the Proceedings of 

 this Academy, and earlier, in 1842, a new edition of Farrar's 

 Electricity and Magnetism. In 1873 he was the President for the 

 year of the American Association, and in his reception address at 

 Portland he said : " Few of us can aspire to the honor of being 

 discoverers of the laws of nature in the highest sense of that 

 phrase. But no one, however humble his capacities, or however 

 limited his opportunities, who labors for science, will fail to ad- 

 vance it." This well expresses the attitude of our colleague towards 

 his profession. He was not a born investigator, but one whose 

 patli in life was determined by force of circumstances, rather than 

 by natural predilections. He was primarily a scholar, and the great 

 service which he rendered to science was that of a scholar and a 

 teacher, and not that of an experimenter. At the present day. 

 courses of research in all departments of study are the latest fad 

 at many of our higher institutions of learning ; but excepting al- 

 ways the few highly favored men of the race to whom an unusual 

 scientific insight has been given, it may be a question whether the 

 broad scholar does not exert a greater influence on the advancement 

 of knowledge than the average specialist. 



But although Professor Lovering seems to have had little inclina- 

 tion to undertake original experimental investigation in Physics, he 

 did a very large amount of work in observing and correlating facts. 

 He was associated with the late Professor William C. Bond in the 



