200 Obituary Notices of Fellou's deceased. 



sums, better than the book. In 1832, at 13 years of age, he was 

 sent to Dr. Walls' school in Dublin; and in 1835 for two years to 

 Bristol College, of which Dr. Jerrard was Principal. There is a 

 tradition that he did many of the propositions of Euclid, as problems, 

 without looking at the book. He considered that he owed much to 

 the teaching of Francis Newman, brother of the Cardinal, then 

 mathematical master at Bristol College, and a man of great charm 

 of character as well as of unusual attainments. 



On the first crossing to Bristol the ship nearly foundered ; and his 

 brother, who was escorting him, was much impressed by his coolness 

 in face of danger. His habit, often remarked in after life, of answer- 

 ing with a plain " yes " or " no," when something more elaborate was 

 expected, is supposed to date from this time, when his brothers 

 chaffed him and warned him that if he gave "long Irish answers" he 

 would be laughed at by his school-fellows. 



It is surprising to learn that as a little boy he was passionate, and 

 liable to violent, if transitory, fits of rage. So completely was this 

 tendency overcome that in after life his temper was remarkably calm 

 and even. He was fond of botany, and when about sixteen or seventeen, 

 collected butterflies and caterpillars. It is narrated that one day 

 while on a walk with a friend he failed to return the salutation of 

 some ladies of his acquaintance, afterwards explaining his conduct by 

 remarking that his hat was full of beetles ! 



In 1837, the year of Queen Victoria's accession, he commenced 

 residence at Cambridge, where he was to find his home, almost without 

 intermission, for sixty-six years. In those days sports were not the 

 fashion for reading men, but he was a good walker, and astonished his- 

 contemporaries by the strength of his swimming. Even at a much 

 later date he enjoyed encounters with wind and waves in his summer 

 holidays on the north coast of Ireland. At Pembroke College his 

 mathematical abilities soon attracted attention, and in 1841 he 

 graduated as Senior Wrangler and first Smith's Prizeman. In the 

 same year he was elected Fellow of his College. 



After his degree, Stokes lost little time in applying his mathe- 

 matical powers to original investigation. During the next three or 

 four years there appeared papers dealing with hydrodynamics, wherein 

 are contained many standard theorems. As an example of these 

 novelties, the use of a stream-function in three dimensions may be cited. 

 It had already been shown by Lagrange and Earnshaw that in the 

 motion of an incompressible fluid in two dimensions the component 

 velocities at any point may be expressed by means of a function 

 known as the stream-function, from the property that it remains 

 constant along any line of motion. It was further shown by Stokes 

 that there is a similar function in three dimensions when the motion is. 



