VI 



planet into elliptic orbits with a periodic time less than that of 

 Jupiter ; and by a further scrutiny of the dynamical conditions he 

 finds that moderate inclinations to the orbit of Jupiter will largely 

 preponderate among the comets so affected, and that direct motions 

 will preponderate over retrograde thus explaining both these 

 observed facts of nature. This remarkable investigation will be 

 found in three papers, one in the ' American Journal of Science and 

 Arts,' 3rd Series, vol. 16 (1878), and the other two in the Reports 

 of the British Association for 1879 and 1891. 



It is recorded of Professor Newton that he was noted in his own 

 university for the special pleasure which he took in all mathematical 

 investigations upon which geometrical insight could be made to 

 bear; and it must strike every student of Professor Newton's 

 published work that science in large measure owes the discoveries 

 which he made to the clearness of his geometrical and dynamical 

 conceptions, and to his facility in dealing with them. 



This record ought not to close without referring to the circum- 

 stance that Professor Newton's original researches were the offspring 

 of his leisure. He regarded the duties of his professorship as those 

 of primary obligation upon him ; to these he at all times first gave 

 his full attention, and he seems to have possessed in a conspicuous 

 degree the powers of imparting to the students who had the good 

 fortune to be brought into contact with him a share of his own 

 enthusiastic love of mathematics. The motives which impelled 

 him to devote in addition the time which he felt to be at his own 

 disposal to a search into the secrets of nature, are illustrated by 

 words that he once used and which will find an echo in many 

 minds : " To discover some new truth in nature, even though it 

 concerns the small things in the world, gives one of the purest 

 pleasures in human experience, and it gives joy to tell others of the 

 treasure found." 



G. J. S. 



RICHARD QUAIN, who died on March 13, 1898, at the age of 81, was 

 born on October 30, 1816, at Mallow-on-the-Blackwater, co. Cork, in 

 which county his family was one of the best known and most 

 respected. His father, John Quain, was a younger brother of 

 Richard Quain, of Ratheahy, whose sons, Jones and Richard, were 

 distinguished for their knowledge of anatomy and surgery, and John 

 Richard as a lawyer and judge in the Court of Queen's Bench. The 

 father of the subject of this notice married, in 1815, Mary, daughter 

 of Michael Burke, of Mallow, a member of an ancient and honoured 

 Irish family. 



After early education at Cloyne, Richard Quain was apprenticed to 

 a medical practitioner in Limerick, where he acquired a knowledge of 



