THOMSON AND TAIT 69 



whence, was sketched to us by the lecturer. In pro- 

 posing a vote of thanks to Sir David Gill, Lord Kelvin 

 burst into a sort of rhapsody, in which, with unaffected 

 enthusiasm, he declared that we had been taken on a 

 journey far more wonderful than that of Aladdin on 

 the enchanted carpet; we had been carrieu to the 

 remotest stars and well-nigh round the universe, and 

 brought back safely to Leicester on the wings of science, 

 and the most marvellous thing about it all was that 

 it is true ! 



A few weeks before this Lord Kelvin was at the 

 dinner in celebration of the jubilee of the foundation 

 of the Chemical Society. In the speech which he then 

 made he referred to the painful accident of a year or so 

 ago which we had all so much regretted, when he had 

 burnt his hand accidentally in some experiments with 

 phosphorus, and had had to carry his arm in a sling 

 for some weeks. " Lord Rayleigh, the president of the 

 Royal Society," he said, "has just told us how, as a 

 boy, he gave proof of his devotion to chemical science 

 by burning his fingers with phosphorus but I think 

 my devotion must be considered greater than his, for I 

 burnt my fingers very badly with phosphorus only last 

 year, when I was 83 years old. It was at the end 

 of April. My friends said I was old enough to know 

 better, and it should have happened, not at the end 

 of April, but on the first day, of that month." Lord 

 Kelvin was associated in work in the sixties and seventies 

 with another splendid man, Tait, of Edinburgh, who, 

 besides being a great professor of " Natural Philosophy," 

 and joint author of the celebrated treatise known as 

 Thomson and Tait, was a great athlete a golfer of 

 the first class, a first-rate billiard player, and a wise 

 lover of good ale, which he drank and gave to his 

 friends to drink, whilst he discoursed as few, if any, 

 to my knowledge, can now do, of things philosophical, 

 mathematical, and humane. 



