26 J. HOPKINSON AJS^NIVEESART ADDRESS : 



this work : " It is probably the best and most complete collection 

 of the kind that, up to that time, had been published." In this, 

 as in all his writings, there is much that was in advance of the 

 time. It is written in his favourite style — in Aphorisms, short 

 pithy sentences, each containing a truth completely worked out. 

 The most methodical and vahiable portion of the work is the 

 treatise on Sound comprised in Aphorisms 101 to 290. A few 

 illustrations of his prescience may be given. The humming of 

 bees, he says, may be " f i-om the motion of their wings, for it is 

 not heard but when they stir." He suggests an experiment to 

 ascertain whether if there be two bells in unison " the striking of 

 the one would move the other more than if it were of another 

 accord," thus anticipating our present knowledge of sympathy of 

 vibration. He devises an ear-trumpet "for those that are thick of 

 hearing." (He anticipated the invention of speaking-tubes in his 

 'New Atlantis.') And he compares the generation and perishing 

 of sounds with circular waves in water, which is the readiest way 

 in which we can now explain the undulatory theory of sound. He 

 believes in transmutation but not in annihilation, in both respects 

 being in opposition to the opinions of his age and in accord with 

 those of ours. He clearly shows, in Aphorisms 525, 526, etc., 

 that he believes "the transmutation of plants one into another" 

 to be chiefly due to their environment, and that cultivated plants 

 will sooner " change into other species than those that come of 

 themselves ; for culture giveth but an adventitious nature, which, 

 is more easily put off " But though things may change, in the 

 universe nothing can be lost. "There is nothing more certain in 

 nature," he says, in Aphorism 100, "than that it is impossible 

 for any body to be utterly annihilated ; " and he then shows how 

 bodies may be preserved from putrefaction by what we now call 

 the antiseptic treatment, further elaborating his views in Aphorism 

 771, in which he says that "if you provide against three causes of 

 putrif action, bodies will not corrupt." The first provision is to 

 exclude the air; the second to place the body in a preservative 

 " heterogeneal," not " commaterial," medium; and the third that 

 the body " be not of that gross that it may corrupt within itself." 

 In Aphorism 341 he says: "The first means of prohibiting or 

 checking putrifaction is cold ; for we see that meat and (h'ink will 

 last longer unputrified, or unsoured, in winter than in summer ; 

 and we see that flowers and fruits, put in conservatories of snow, 

 keep fresh." 



This quotation is a fit prelude to the end, for in making an 

 experiment to ascertain the preservative effect of snow. Bacon 



