Sept. 25, 1879] 



NATURE 



507 



house with boat, dredges, and other collecting gear will be 

 added. The whole will be so arranged that additional 

 accommodation may be added when found desirable. 



We need not point out the importance of the station 

 proposed to be erected in Sydney. It is expected that 

 most of those who will make use of the station will 

 come from England, and therefore it will be only fair 

 that Enghsh biologists should help our Sydney friends 

 to complete the 300/. required for the station. There 

 is some fear that they may not be able to raise the 

 whole sum in the colony, and we would therefore strongly 

 urge upon those of our readers interested in the enterprise 

 to lend a helping hand. Dr. J. C. Co.\, Hunter Street, 

 Sydney, acts as treasurer, and Mr. George Leslie, 

 assistant to Sir Wyville Thomson, University, Edin- 

 burgh, has been asked to become treasurer for any 

 subscriptions that may be raised at home.. 



Baron Maclay, we may state, is at present engaged in 

 an excursion in Polynesia, and will return to Sydney 

 about the end of the present year. 



THE RESIGNATION OF DR.' ANDREWS 



VX/'E learn with great regret that Dr. Andrews has 

 *♦ resigned the post he has so long held as vice- 

 president of Queen's College, Belfast, and Professor of 

 Chemistry. Dr. Andrews had been urged by his brother 

 professors to allow himself to be proposed for the first 

 vacancy in the presidency of the College, but his sense of 

 duty urged him to give a peremptory refusal. 



With reference to Dr. Andrews's work both as a pro- 

 fessor and as a scientific worker, we quote from an excel- 

 lent article in the Northern Whig of the i8th inst. : — 



" Before the formation of the Queen's University he had 

 been Professor of Chemistry in the medical school of the 

 Belfast Institution, and from this post he was transferred 

 to a similar chair in Queen's College, while at the same 

 time he was appointed its first vice-president. " The im- 

 portance of this latter office may be gathered from the 

 fact that to a joint board, consisting of the presidents and 

 vice-presidents of Belfast, Cork, and Galway, was remitted 

 the arduous task of framing statutes and ordinances for 

 the internal management of the colleges, and on this 

 board there was certainly no stronger man than Dr. 

 Andrews. The Queen's Colleges were launched upon the 

 country as a great educational experiment. Founded upon 

 the principle of united secular and separate religious 

 instruction, they had to contend all through their career 

 against opposition of the bitterest and most unscrupulous 

 character. The men, therefore, who actually worked the 

 vessel through its early dangers have deserved well of 

 their country in no small degree, and in the front rank of 

 these stands Dr. Andrews. And not merely was he a 



Practical worker in the cause of united education ; he has 

 csides given to the world some of the most effectire ex- 

 positions of its principles. His address on the subject, 

 delivered in 1867 to the Social Science Congress in Bel- 

 fast, is one of the classics of the question, and it is not 

 too much to say that its influence was powerfully felt in 

 moulding opinion in England in preparation for the 

 Liberal educational policy of 1870. Nor was he a less 

 well-recognised authority in regard to the general ques- 

 tion of university education. His little work entitled 

 'Studium Generale,' elicited, if we mistake not, by the 

 supplemental charter proposals, contains a most fresh and 

 vigorous enunciation of the most enlightened views upon 

 higher education. As a teacher of science. Dr. Andrews 

 has been most successful. His mastery of the subject found 

 expression in exposition of the clearest and most lucid 

 character, while his faculty of popular experimenting was 

 of the most delicately accurate and attractive character. 

 He had a peculiar power of gathering about him the ^lite 

 of the best men of the year ; wherever there was a man 



endowed with somewhat of the true scientific spirit, he 

 was sure to gravitate towards the laboratory ; and it is an 

 interesting fact that the great majority of Dr. Andrews's 

 most trusted laboratory students have turned out success- 

 ful men in after life. 



"But, however eminent have been Dr. Andrews's services 

 in the directions already alluded to, it is as an original 

 scientific investigator that he has gained his principal 

 title to an immortal place in the annals of fame. Dr. 

 Andrews belongs to the first rank of that remarkable 

 body of professed chemists whose researches have been 

 more of a physical than of a chemical nature. The 

 names of Faraday, Graham, and Regnault, at once 

 suggest themselves in this connection ; and we are quite 

 justified in saying that in insight, accuracy, and ori- 

 ginality, as well as in the intrinsic value of their results, 

 Dr. Andrews's investigations will bear comparison with 

 the very best work of these great men. We cannot here 

 attempt to give more than a very brief notice of the 

 results of some of the more important of Dr. Andrews's 

 papers. The complete list will be found in that invaluable 

 work "The Royal Society Catalogue of Scientific Papers," 

 to which all men of science are under the deepest obliga- 

 tions. The most important of his earlier investigations 

 is a brilliant series of determinations of the heat of 

 combination of different classes of substances. Con- 

 sidering the difficulties of this inquiry, as shown by the 

 preposterous results which have sometimes been given 

 even by able experimenters, the simplicity of Dr. 

 Andrews's methods and the recognised accuracy of his 

 results form a striking tribute to his care and skill. The 

 results are not only of high theoretical value as regards 

 the constitution of matter, but also of great importance 

 for practical determinations of the electromotive force of 

 various voltaic combinations. Next we have his grand 

 researches on ozone, a remarkable body first distinctly 

 recognised by Schonbein, whose nature was long a puzzle 

 to chemists. It was reserved for Dr. Andrews to show 

 (i) that ozone, from whatever source derived, is one and 

 the same body ; (2) that it is an allotropic form of oxygen. 

 Before he cleared up these points it was generally supposed 

 by chemists that there were different kinds of ozone, and 

 that one of them, prepared by electrolysis, was a teroxide 

 of hydrogen. In a second research Dr. Andrews trac ed 

 the volumetric changes which occur in the formation of 

 ozone from pure oxygen by the electric discharge — where 

 it has been long known under the name of ' the smell of 

 lightning' — and gave a number of similar and very re? 

 markable volumetric changes observed in other gases, 

 simple as well as compound, produced under the same 

 experimental conditions. He showed that the chemical 

 activity of chlorine could be greatly increased, just as that 

 of oxogen was, by electric discharges. This question has 

 again only very recently been reopened by a Continental 

 chemist, who maintains that chlorine is not an element, 

 but a compound body. The most recent of Dr. Andrews's 

 grand contributions to science is his classical research 

 into the ' Continuity of the Liquid and Gaseous States of 

 Matter.' By means of a very simple but exquisite 

 apparatus (prepared for him under his own directions by 

 our very skilful townsman, Mr. Cumine), he showed that 

 it was possible to convert a gas such as carbonic acid into 

 a liquid, or the liquid into the gas, without any discon- 

 tinuity whatever. In fact, a spectator may watch the 

 body throughout the process, assure himself that it is gas 

 at starting, and that it is liquid at last, and yet not be 

 able to state when the change took place. From the 

 scientific point of view, this phenomenon is best described 

 by the use of Dr. Andrews's discovery of the 'critical 

 point,' as it is called. For every gas or vapour there is a 

 special temperature called its critical point, which is such 

 that only when the temperature of the gas or vapour is 

 under that point can it exist in presence of the liquid; so 

 that the portion liquefied can be distinguished from the 



