1883.] on Count Bumford, Originator of the Bo)/aI Institution. 437 



and theoretical researches, which, instead of dealing with things 

 already achieved, carried the mind into nnexplored regions of nature, 

 forgetful, if not neglectful, whether the discoveries made in that region 

 had or had not a bearing on the arts and comforts or necessities 

 of material life. 



Eumford and his Institution had to bear the brunt of ridicule, and 

 he felt it ; but men of ready wit have not abstained from exercising it 

 on societies of greater age and higher claims. Shafts of sarcasm 

 without number have been launched at the Royal Society. It is per- 

 fectly natural for persons who have little taste for scientific inquiry 

 and less knowledge of the methods of nature, to feel amused, if not 

 scandalised, by the apparently insignificant subjects which sometimes 

 occu2\v the scientific mind. They are not aware that in science the 

 most stupendous phenomena otten find their suggestion and interpre- 

 tation in the most minute, — that the smallest laboratory fact is 

 connected by indissoluble ties with the grandest operations of nature. 

 Thus the iridescences of the common soap-bubble, subjected to 

 scientific analysis, have emerged in the conclusion that stellar space 

 is a plenum filled with a material substance, capable of transmitting 

 motion with a rapidity which would girdle the equatorial earth eight 

 times in a second ; while the tremors of this substance, in one form, 

 constitute what we call light, and, in all forms, constitute what we 

 call radiant heat. Not seeing this connection between great and 

 small ; not discerning that as regards the illustration of physical 

 principles there is no great and no small, the wits, considering the 

 small contemptible, permitted sarcasm to flow accordingly. But 

 these things have passed away, otherwise it would not be superfluous 

 to remind this audience, as a case in point, that the splendour which 

 in the form of the electric light now falls upon our squares and 

 thoroughfares, has its germ and ancestry in a spark so feeble as to 

 be scarcely visible when first revealed within the walls of this 

 Institution. 



It is with reluctance that I take the slightest exception to what 

 my American friends have written regarding Rumford and his 

 achievements. But what they have written induces me to assure them 

 that the scientific men of England are not prone to stinginess in 

 recosjnisiner the merits of their fellow-labourers in other lands : and 

 had Rumford, instead of accomplishing none of his work in the hind 

 of his birth, accomplished the whole of it there, his recognition 

 among us here would not be less hearty than it is now. As things 

 stand, national prejudice, if it existed, might be expected to lean to 

 Rumford"s side. But no such prejudice exists, and to write as if it 

 did exist is a mistake. In reference to myself. Dr. Ellis, gently but still 

 reproachfully, makes the following remark : — " Professor Tyndall in 

 his work on Heat has but moderately recognised the claims and merit 

 of Rumford, when, after largely quoting from his essay, he adds, 

 ' When the history of the dynamical theory of heat is written, the 



