THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT IN ENGLAND. 



277 



something casual and accidental about the great ideas 

 which British men of science contributed during the first 

 half of the century. Each of them chooses an isolated 



Isol 



position, a special form of delivery, frequently a Ian- 

 guage and style of his own. They attach little or no 

 importance to the labours of others, with which they 

 are frequently unacquainted. 1 Important papers are 

 lost or buried, as in the case of Cavendish and Green. 

 Novel ideas are communicated in unintelligible language 

 and symbols, and accordingly neglected. This was the 

 case with Dr Young's writings, and to a certain extent 

 with Faraday's. The greatest discoveries were unduly 

 postponed through the absence of assistance, as seems to 

 have been the case with Adams's discovery of Neptune, 2 

 perhaps with Stokes's anticipation of spectrum analysis. 3 



ation of 



* en 



1 This is correct of most of the 

 great men referred to in the course 

 of this chapter. Among them, how- 

 ever, Rowan Hamilton forms an ex- 

 ception. Though working on quite 

 original lines, he took a great in- 

 terest in the labours and sugges- 

 tions contained in the writings of 

 his forerunners and contemporaries, 

 as the historical notices in the pre- 

 face to his ' Lectures on Quater- 

 nions ' (1853) prove; likewise his 

 correspondence with De Morgan (see 

 1 Life of Sir W. R. H.,' vol. iii.) 



2 The story of the discovery of 

 Neptune has been frequently told. 

 The first publication of the ele- 

 ments of the suspected planet, 

 which enabled a search to be made, 

 came from Leverrier to the Paris 

 Academy of Sciences on the 1st 

 July and the 31st August 1846. 

 In consequence of this publication, 

 Oalle at Berlin, requested by Lever- 

 rier to search in the neighbourhood 

 of 8 Capricorn!, and comparing his 

 observations made on the same 



night on which he received the 

 request, 23rd September 1846, with 

 Bremiker's map, actually found the 

 planet. Subsequently it became 

 known that Adams of Cambridge 

 had already communicated his 

 elements in September and October 

 1845 to Challis and Airy, and that 

 the former had actually seen the 

 planet on the 4th and 12th of 

 August 1846, but for want of 

 equally detailed maps had not 

 compared the observation and estab- 

 lished the discovery. See Whewell's 

 ' History of the Inductive Sciences,' 

 third ed., 1857, vol. ii. p. 460, &c. ; 

 also Wolf, ' Qeschichte der Astro- 

 nomie,' p. 537, &c. 



* It appears from a communica- 

 tion of Sir William Thomson (Lord 

 Kelvin) to Kirchhoff immediately 

 after the latter had published in 

 1859 his explanation of the iden- 

 tity of the dark lines in the solar 

 spectrum with the bright lines in 

 the spectra of coloured flames, that 

 Stokes, soon after the publication*. 



