438 



NATURE 



[December i, 192 i 



more than one great man." It is from Voltaire 

 we have the story of Newton and the apple. He 

 was in England from 1726 to 1729, and he learned 

 it from Newton's niece, Mrs. Conduitt. 



Buried next to Newton is his great successor, 

 Lord Kelvin, while a little farther towards the 

 centre of the nave are the graves of Telford and 

 Robert Stephenson. Thomas Telford, designer of 

 the suspension bridge over the Menai Straits, 

 engineer of the Caledonian Canal, first president of 

 the Institution of Civil Engineers, "a fellow of 

 infinite humour and of strong, enterprising mind," 

 died at 24 Abingdon Street, Westminster, on Sep- 

 tember 2, 1834, and was buried in the Abbey on 

 September 10. Twenty-five years later Robert 

 Stephenson, at his own request, was buried beside 

 him. Both are commemorated elsewhere in the 

 Abbey, Telford by a statue, Stephenson by a 

 window. Still nearer the centre of the nave, and 

 not far from the spot hallowed to-day as the 

 resting-place of the "Unknown Warrior," is the 

 common grave of Thomas Tompion (1639-1713), 

 "the father of English watch-making," and his 

 successor, "honest George Graham " ( 1673-175 1), 

 who constructed astronomical instruments for 

 Halley and Bradley, and "whose inventions do 

 honour to ye British Genius, whose accurate per- 

 formances are ye standard of mechanic skill." 

 The present tombstone was removed in 1838, and 

 for some years, until Dean Stanley replaced it, 

 Graham's grave was marked only by a plain 

 lozenge-shaped stone. At the west end of the nave 

 is the memorial to John Conduitt (1688-1737), 

 who married Newton's niece and succeeded him 

 at the Mint. It is within Conduitt's monument 

 that a tablet was placed some forty vears ago to 

 commemorate the brilliant work of the young 

 Lancashire clergyman, Jeremiah Horrocks. 



Of no less interest than the nave is the north 

 aisle, the windows of which commemorate the work 

 of Richard Trevithick {1771-1833), most fertile of 

 inventors, and, like Hedley, Blenkinsop, and 

 George Stephenson, one of the fathers of the loco- 

 motive ; the younger Brunei (1806—59), who lived 

 just long enough to see the completion of his 

 greatest works, the Albert Bridge at Saltash, and 

 the "Great Eastern"; Sir Benjamin Baker 

 (1840-1907), joint engineer with Fowler of the 

 Forth Bridge; Joseph Locke (1805-60), one of the 

 greatest of railway engineers ; Robert Stephenson 

 (1803-59), constructor of the London to Birming- 

 ham railway, designer of many famous bridges, 

 and, like Baker and Locke, president of the In- 

 stitution of Civil Engineers ; Lord Kelvin 

 (1824-1907), the greatest of modern physicists, 

 who redeemed the Atlantic cable from failure and 

 showed the possibility of utilising the power of 

 Niagara; and Sir William Siemens (1823-83), 

 electrician and metallurgist, a pioneer of the 

 dynamo, and the inventor of the regenerative fur- 

 nace, and president of the Institution of Mechan- 

 ical Engineers. 



Beneath these windows are the monuments to 

 John Woodward (i 665-1 728), professor of physic 



NO. 2718, VOL. 108] 



at Gresham College, founder of the chair of 

 geology at Cambridge, and author of an "Essay 

 towards a Natural History of the Earth " ; the 

 grave of, and monument to, Sir Charles Lyell 

 ( 1 797-1875), "the founder of English geology"; 

 and near the spot where Ben Jonson was buried 

 upright in a space 2 ft. by 2 ft. — all he asked for 

 — is the grave of John Hunter (1728-93), the great 

 anatomist. Originally buried in the vaults of 

 St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, Hunter's coffin was 

 brought to light by Frank Buckland as the result 

 of a unique example of "chivalrous devotion to 

 the rehc of a great man." At the close of the 

 afternoon service in the Abbey on March 28, 1859, 

 in the presence of the president and fellows of the 

 Royal College of Surgeons, Hunter's remains were 

 re-interred among those of his peers. A little 

 past the monument to Richard Mead (1673-1754), 

 "prince of English physicians," who attended 

 Newton in his last illness, and with whom Wood- 

 ward fought a duel in the entrance to Gresham 

 College, are found the graves of Darwin and of 

 Sir John Herschel, "the prose poet of science," 

 whose vow " to try and leave the world wiser than 

 he found it " was amply fulfilled by a life full of 

 the noblest effort. 



Further to the east, just within the aisle of the 

 choir, and grouped about the tomb of Lord John 

 Thynne, fifty years a canon of Westminster, are 

 the memorials to Adams, Stokes, Hooker, 

 Wallace, Darwin, Lister, and Joule. Most of 

 these memorials are portrait medallions, but that to 

 Joule is a tablet, the inscription upon which states 

 that it was erected " in recognition of services 

 rendered to science in establishing the law of the 

 conservation of energy and determining the me- 

 chanical equivalent of heat," achievements which, 

 in the words of Tyndall at the Jubilee of 1887, 

 formed "the largest flower in the garland which 

 the science of the last fifty years is able to offer 

 to the Queen." Mention must also be made of the 

 statue close by of Sir Stamford Raffles 

 (1781-1826), founder of the colony of Singapore 

 and the first president of the Zoological Society. 



Standing at the angle of the choir — now known 

 as Science Corner — close to the grave of Darwin, 

 with the graves of Newton and Kelvin to the south 

 and the windows to the engineers to the north, in 

 full view of the memorials of Darwin, Stokes, and 

 Lister, it may be questioned whether there exists 

 another spot which recalls such high endeavours, 

 such lofty aims, such devotion to the search for 

 truth and the spread of knowledge. The Abbey 

 here is a veritable temple of science rivalling in 

 interest the Statesmen's Aisle, the tombs of Plan- 

 tagenets and Tudors, and even the Poets' Corner. 

 Here are commemorated those whose guiding stai^^B 

 was : " Prove all things ; hold fast to that whicli^B 1 

 is good." Here indeed are some to whom apply 

 the words : " A wise man shall inherit glor\' 

 among his people, and his name shall be per- 

 petual." 



The south aisle contains four monuments of 1 

 scientific interest, the men comnremorated being" j 



