IX 



but, to show what to his mind were the possibilities of its future, we 

 need only refer to the multifarious purposes to which electricity was 

 applied at his country residence near Tunbridge Wells. There elec- 

 tricity might be found doing the great part of the actual work of the 

 farm sawing wood, and pumping water, and driving most of the 

 various mechanical appliances on the premises. The very latest 

 use to which it was here applied was for horticultural purposes. 

 The electric light was used during the hours of darkness to continue 

 the sun's work, in promoting the growth and ripening of plants and 

 fruits, or, in other experiments, to compete with the sun in this 

 work ; the results in this latest application being made the subject 

 of papers by Siemens, contributed to the Royal Society in March, 

 1880, and to the York Meeting of the British Association in 1881. 



In the foregoing, we have sought to exhibit the life work of Sir 

 William Siemens, not in its chronological order, but as viewed in the 

 two departments " Utilisation of Heat " and " Utilisation of Elec- 

 tricity." Of the thirty-five papers which appear under his name in 

 the Catalogue of Scientific Papers, and which do not include the last 

 ten years of his life, all are with, perhaps, one not happy exception, 

 more or less directly the result of his efforts in one or other of 

 these directions. The exception referred to is his paper " On the 

 Conservation of Solar Energy," contributed to the Royal Society, 

 February 1882, and embodied in an article " A New Theory of the 

 Sun," published in the " Nineteenth Century " of April 1882 ; but 

 even this may well be considered no exception, from its evident con- 

 nexion with the principle of " Regeneration of Heat," and treating, 

 as it does, of the sun imagined as a great regenei-ative gas furnace. 

 Careful consideration of the circumstances, however, shows this view 

 to be wholly untenable. While his papers are thus almost wholly of 

 a practical nature, his work in the domain of pure science has been 

 neither slight nor unimportant, because, in experimentally developing 

 his inventions, his mind was ever on the alert, and hence his efforts 

 towards the practical application of the results of science, in many 

 cases, served to put these results in a clearer light. 



Sir William Siemens has received recognition of his services to 

 pure and applied science from the Emperor of Brazil, the Shah of 

 Persia, and from France both under the Empire and the Republic, 

 whilst in April last Her Majesty was graciously pleased to confer 

 upon him the honour of knighthood. He was a member of nearly all 

 the scientific societies of Great Britain; he was the senior member of 

 council of the Institution of Civil Engineers ; he was elected a 

 member of the Royal Society in 1862, and has twice served on the 

 council of that body. He has been President of the Institution of 

 Mechanical Engineers, twice of the Society of Telegraph Engineers, 

 of the Iron and Steel Institute, and last year, at Southampton, of the 



