1880.] 539 [Gihimn. 



founder of the Royal Institution in London, — were deprived 

 in youth of the advantages of university and collegiate 

 training ; but both of them enjoyed within the fellowship 

 of learned societies intellectual excitement and instruction, 

 and both have helped to perpetuate to our day the good 

 influences in which they participated. 



The mention of Rumford's name is suggestive of an im- 

 portant investigation recently completed, which beautifully 

 illustrates the joint operations of an academy and a univer- 

 sity. Your younger sister, the American Academy in Boston, 

 holds a fund which was given by Rum ford for the encourage- 

 ment of researches in respect to light and heat. It has given 

 the Rumford medal, iirst to Dr. Robert Hare, a distinguished 

 member of this Society, and then to Ericsson, Treadwell, 

 Clark, Corliss and Draper. Of late years it has bought in- 

 struments for the promotion of physical investigations. 



Three or four years ago a new university originated in 

 Baltimore, and one of the first men of science called into its 

 service was a young physicist of Troy,- whose studies in 

 electricity, hardly noticed in this country, had attracted the 

 commendation of Clerk Maxwell, in the University of Cam- 

 bridge. This Hopkins professor suggested to one of the 

 Rumford trustees a method which might be employed for 

 the more accurate determination of the mechanical equiva- 

 lent of heat. The Academy listened to the proposal and 

 agreed to furnish from the Rumford fund a part of the cost 

 of the necessary apparatus ; the University encouraged its 

 professor to undertake and prosecute the inquiry and bore a 

 part of the cost of the instruments. The investigation has 

 been concluded, and its results have been published in a 

 memoir of nearly two hundred pages by the Academy in 

 Boston. Its conclusions are of fundamental importance'; 



