184 PROCEEDINGS OF THE OHIO ACADEMY OF SCIENCE, 



as a lawyer he kept up his scientific and philosophical studies. 

 As early as 1848 when only twenty-five years of age he had 

 published a volume which he had ambitiously christened, "Gen- 

 eral Principles of the Philosophy of Nature." A third of a cen- 

 tury later on the publication of his second book, the result of 

 his matured studies of the fundamental principles of physical 

 science, he wrote of the first as follows : — "I deem it important 

 to have it understood at the outset that this treatise is in no 

 sense a further exposition of the doctrines of a book, "The Phil- 

 osophy of Nature" which I published more than a third of a 

 century ago. That book was written while I was under the 

 spell of Hegel's ontological reveries, at a time when I was 

 barely of age and still seriously affected with the metaphysical 

 malady which seems to be one of the unavoidable disorders of 

 intellectual infancy. The labor expended in writing it was not, 

 perhaps, wholly wasted and there are things in it of which I 

 am not ashamed even at this day ; but I sincerely regret its pub- 

 lication which is in some degree atoned for, I hope, by the con- 

 tents of the present volume." This work was entitled "The 

 Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics" and was published 

 in 1882 as one of the "International Scientific Series." As the 

 author was not sparing in his criticism of and attacks upon many 

 of the doctrines and principles then generally esteemed as "fun- 

 damental" by the leading physicists of the world his book was 

 made the subject of sharp and not always friendly comment. 

 Among its most severe critics was Professor Simon Newcomb, 

 who was inclined to denounce it outright. It was my privilege 

 to make these two stalwart interpreters of natural phenomena 

 personally acquainted with each other soon after the appearance 

 of Judge Stallo's book. In personality it would be hard to 

 find two men more unlike. Each was mighty in his own way ; 

 one was flint ; the other steel, and I need hardly say that the 

 half hour following the introduction was extremely illuminating, 

 at least to the "innocent bystander." The remarkable advances 

 in physical science since the publication of Stallo's book, es- 

 pecially as affecting our fundamental notions of the nature of 

 matter and energy have made its title quite inappropriate, but 



