might go further than that and say there was no 

 such thing as isolated phenomena. There was no 

 phenomenon that takes place in nature that had 

 not a bearing and influence on other phenomena, 

 and, therefore, it came to pass that the great unity 

 of nature was maintained, with the greatest possible 

 punctuality and deliberation — that was the only 

 word he could find to use. That constituted to his 

 mind one of the great charms of nature. Speaking 

 of rate, light travelled at 185,000 miles in a second 

 — 10,000 times faster than the passage of the earth 

 around the sun. That light might come from a 

 glowworm, or a common candle, or the sun, or 

 electric light, or from radiant matter, or from 

 those wonderful waves used in wireless telegiaphy 

 — the vibrations travelled at that rate. That was 

 about the fastest speed we can reord. There 

 w^ere other speeds approaching it, but he supposed 

 it was almost as fast as anything possibly could 

 move. But we must not limit nature even in this 

 respect. It went to show that all those particular 

 influences of light w»>re of one character, and prob- 

 ably meant that they were very much the same 

 thing, the whole of them. As regarded division, 

 we could have many thousands of vibrations in 

 an inch, or indeed in a tenth of an inch. Although 

 very much too small even for the microscope to 

 see, they could be estimated and valued, and would 

 be found as regarded nature's application of them, 

 exactly maintained and adhered to. Last Spring 

 was a backward Spring, and it was often remarked 

 by those going into the country that when we had 

 some warm showera we should see things make up 

 for lost time. So it was. The growth that the 

 warm showers produced in some of the garden 

 flowers and plants was remarkably rapid. What 

 did that mean !-^ It meant the development of 

 millions per second of those small cells of which 

 those flowers were built up. Those cells were elabor- 

 ate constructions^ perfect structures, very small, 

 requiring the microscope to see them at all.and yet 

 they were forming all about us in those spring days 

 with the utmost rapidity and noiselessly. How 

 different from the scurry he had alluded to in the 

 first part of his remarks I Then they came 

 again to chemical action and the rapidity involved 

 there. Someone might say, " How do you make 

 out there is no such thingasinstantaneous action.'" 

 It was a succession of events, however close those 

 events might come together. Chemical decompo- 

 sition was not an affair of a moment. It was a 

 succession of events. It was true we showed the 

 first equation that took place and the last, but we 

 did not show and we could not show the great 

 amount of interchanges which took place between 

 those two events, although an instant of time 

 embraced the whole of them. Perhaps those 

 changes might amount to thousands in number. 

 "What about explosions ? This was an age of 

 explosi ves — high explosives for bias -ing and 

 destructive purposes and low explosives for 

 military purposes. We had in those explosives, 

 they would say, instantaneous action. Indeed 

 not. There was always a succession of events, 

 though very rapidly carried on. If ever there 

 was a time when Nature's great maxim, nihil 

 per saltum — nothing done by a jump — asserted 

 itself. 1 1 was in the case of an explosion . 



Of course it was a rapid thing as we under- 

 stood it. If we could see the ultimata molecules 

 of matter concerned in that explosion, if we 

 could witness those vibrations, if we could 

 witness their re-arrangement he did not think for 

 a moment we could compare it to any thing except 

 a very large military review of picked and trained 

 troops which were carrying out very rapid and 

 complicated manoeuvres with careful and perfect 

 precision. We should see nothing approachiug 

 confusion or chaos, or anything that would make 

 us think there was a violence happening to the 

 laws of nature. They were strictly according to 

 law, and however terrible their forces and 

 instantaneous their effect, they were carried on 

 with the greatest deliberation, and without hurry 

 or hast«. So one might go through the whole 

 category of chemical phenomena. Mr. Haivey said 

 he would like toallude to another matter of motion. 

 Without any egotism he would like to go back 

 twenty-seven years, w hen the first lecture was given 

 on those premises by himself on radiant matter 

 which was then a new subject. He was conscious 

 he was the only uerson present who remembered 

 that lecture. Ho was invited to give it by the 

 then headmaster, and the lecture was intended to 

 bring before the Canterbury public the phe- 

 nomena of radiant matter as exhibited by Sir W. 

 Crookes' own apparatus devised for the purpose. 

 There they had matter in a very remarkable state. 

 They did not know much about it, but we had 

 kno -vn a great deal more since. At that lecture 

 he had, among other things to exhibit, some 

 glass vessels holding perhaps a pint. Those 

 vessels had been exhausted of the residuary air or 

 gas in them to what was called a millionth of an 

 atmosphere, which was the greatest exhaustion 

 that could be produced then. The amount of 

 matter left in these vessels would be exceedingly 

 small ; much too small for the most delicate 

 balance to indicate by weight. When an electric 

 current was passed through a vessel like that the 

 particles remaining in the vessel — they were very 

 small, of course— had elbow room enough to "cut 

 their capers," which they could not do in a crowd. 

 Obeying tlie behest of the electric current, they 

 were hurled from one end to the other at the rate of 

 50,000 miles in a second. Not so fast as light, 

 but still a very respectable approach to it. At 

 that time they were unable to measure that 

 rate, but they could measure its effects, and 

 they were these : those particles were hurled at 

 one particular spot of the vessel and there was 

 such a bombardment that the glass was made red 

 hot, and if he had not promptly arrested the cur- 

 rent he would have lost his valuable apparatus. 

 Another thing was still more impressive. 

 Another vessel was chosen, in which was a very 

 small delicately made aluminium and mica water 

 wheel of an old fashioned type. The current was 

 allowed to impinge on a point. It struck the 

 water wheel with such force that the wheel 

 became white hot, and had he persisted it would 

 have been destroyed. He then hung the electro- 

 magnet above the water wheel, which pulled the 

 current of projectors upwards, and caused an 

 overshot water wheel. He then put it under 

 the wheel, causing an undershot movement. 



