324 Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 



with water and dried with filter paper, and then plunged into a test 

 tube of water in which another platinum wire was immersed, a current 

 was produced ; while if the wire were removed, left for some time in a 

 solution of pyrogallic acid, washed and dried as before, it produced a 

 current in the opposite direction when again introduced into the test 

 tube. A platinum rod was suspended for a short time in the mouth of 

 an ammonia bottle without touching the neck, washed in a bowl of 

 water and wiped with filter paper, and it then produced a current in 

 one direction when placed in a vessel of water in which a similar rod 

 was lying ; if the rod was exposed to the fumes of nitric acid and 

 treated in a similar manner, an opposite current resulted. When 

 wires immersed in dilute acid exactly compensated each other, 

 mechanical disturbance of one of them, of the nature of bending or 

 stretching, caused an immediate indication of current in the 

 galvanometer. 



In 1883 experiments were made with the flame produced between 

 the secondary terminals of a coil when the primary was in circuit with 

 a Siemens alternating dynamo. The spectrum of the flame was 

 examined, and also the spectra produced when salts of metals were 

 introduced into it. These experiments were subsequent to those of 

 Mr. Spottiswoode. 



When Lord Salisbury was Secretary of State for India he forwarded 

 a despatch to the Governor-General, dated September 28, 1877, 

 enclosing a memorandum from Mr. Lockyer recommending the 

 establishment of a station in Northern India for taking daily photo- 

 graphs of the sun. Lord Salisbury warmly supported the recom- 

 mendation, and, in consequence of his action, photographs of the sun's 

 disc have been taken daily, with few intervals, up to the present time. 

 The correspondence on this subject will be found in the Eeports of the 

 Committee on Solar Physics. Lord Salisbury showed his personal 

 interest in the subject by paying frequent visits to Mr. Lockyer's 

 laboratory while the work on the spectrum of hydrogen was in progress. 



In 1894 Lord Salisbury presided over the meeting of the British 

 Association at Oxford. In his opening address, which attracted much 

 attention at home and abroad from its wide range of knowledge, and 

 is still vividly remembered, he insisted that we are in a condition 

 of uncertainty in many fundamental problems of science, and that 

 many of our general conceptions necessarily remain incomplete and 

 tentative. 



The foregoing is, in the words of one who knew him intimately, "a 

 record of work done in the spare moments of a man whose thoughts 

 as well as his time were claimed by very much besides. Slight as it 

 is, there is enough to suggest that if the power of continuous concen- 

 trated thought, which was peculiarly his characteristic, had been devoted 



