842 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



music are mere developments of mathematical formulas, and of every 

 note and wave in music the equation lies in the pages of Lord Ray- 

 leigh's book. (Laughter and applause.) There are some who have 

 no ear for music, but all who are blessed with eyes can admire the 

 beauties of Nature, and among those one which is seen in Canada 

 frequently, in England often, in Scotland rarely, is the blue sky. 

 (Laughter.) Lord Rayleigh's brilliant piece of mathematical work on 

 the dynamics of blue sky is a monument of the application of mathe- 

 matics to a subject of supreme difficulty, and on the subject of refrac- 

 tion of light he has pointed out the way toward finding all that has 

 to be known, though he has ended his great work by admitting that 

 the explanation of the fundamentals of the reflection and refraction 

 of light is still wanting, and is a subject for the efforts of the British 

 Association for the Advancement of Science. But there is still another 

 subject, electricity and the electric light, and here again Lord Ray- 

 leigh's work is fundamental, and one may hope from the suggestions 

 it contains that electricity may yet be put upon the level of ordinary 

 mechanics, and that the electrician may be able to weigh out electric 

 quantities as easily and readily as a merchant could a quantity of tea 

 or sugar." 



Lord Rayleigh is a man of modest deportment but a very strong 

 man. It was feared that his inaugural address would be an abstruse 

 performance little calculated to interest a general audience, but the 

 apprehension turned out to be groundless. The discourse was full of 

 compressed thought, but closely interested his hearers, and was a 

 model as a survey of the recent advancement in physical science. It 

 was delivered in a clear and effective style, well measured, but with- 

 out the least hesitancy of speech. In this respect the man of the 

 laboratory of mathematics and of research contrasted strongly with 

 many of those literary Englishmen whom we might suppose would 

 cultivate somewhat the art of delivery ; but in all respects Lord Ray- 

 leigh's manner of speaking was in sharp antithesis to the style, for 

 example, of Mr. Matthew Arnold. 



