XIV THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



entitled The Faculty of Arts — the heart of a university. An address 

 to Convocation, April 30, 1891). 



It is further due to Dr. Johnson to say that, himself a loyal member 

 of the Anp;lican Church, he took an active interest in social movements 

 which aim at the promotion of religious life. He was, therefore, always 

 ready with emphatic protest against any teaching which insinuates that 

 scientific discovery tends to weaken the intellectual foundation of faith 

 in the higher nature and destiny of man. This mental attitude is il- 

 lustrated in one of his earliest publications on Science and Religion, 

 which appeared in 1876. 



The appreciation of Dr. Johnson's scientific work demands the 

 judgment of a competent specialist, and it is, therefore, a grateful satis- 

 faction to be able to draw upon the generosity of Professor Harkness for 

 this purpose. Dr. Johnson, he says, had the good fortune to be at 

 Trinity College, Dublin, at a time when the mathematical studies of the 

 place were strongly influenced by the views and methods of a brilliant 

 band of Irish scholars, among whom we think at once of Sir William 

 Rowan Hamilton and George Salmon. It was inevitable and desirable 

 that his teaching should be moulded by Salmon's famous text-books, 

 which have been studied throughout the world with an enthusiasm and 

 appreciation rarely accorded to this class of literature. It was to be 

 expected also that his writings should show signs of Salmon's influence. 

 That this was the case can be illustrated by his interesting paper on 

 curvature of surfaces (Trans. R. Soc. Canada, 1882). The object of 

 the paper is to apply symmetrical methods of analysis to the proof of 

 familiar standard theorems and to show that this can be so done as to 

 utilize the power of symmetry without sacrificing the elegance asso- 

 ciated with the proofs in Salmon's Solid Geometry. 



At all times Dr. Johnson was catholic in his scientific tasks and 

 his range of interest was a wide one. His training on the physical side 

 led to his paper on Newton's use of the Slit and Lens in forming a pure 

 spectrum; his study of astronomy had made him appreciate the ex- 

 treme importance of determining the solar parallex with the utmost 

 accuracy, as is evidenced by his Report on the Preparation at Montreal 

 for observing the transit of Venus. He devoted from time to time a 

 great deal of attention to the question of the study of the tides in Cana- 

 dian waters and did valuable service in calling the attention of Cana- 

 dians to the extreme importance from a practical point of view of 

 attending to such matters; but it must not be supposed that he wished 

 to subordinate the purely utilitarian side of such matters to their theor- 

 etical side. On the contrary it was his hope that tidal investigations 

 founded on extensive observations would be justified by the light they 

 would throw on such problems as 1. The determinat'on of the mass of 



