J. ^ \J V XJ X«. JJ i:- A\. 



^Oi '■y'^yj 



1 Y ^ X ^ ^^ X » ' - 



it lias achieved as an organ of scientific opinion, not 

 only in this country, but throughout the world. 



Sir F. W. Dyson, F.R.S., Astronomer Royal. — 

 The advancement of science owes a great deal to 

 Nature, which keeps men of science in constant 

 touch with one another's work. The outstanding 

 feature of the journal is the combination of thorough- 

 ness and trustworthiness with readability and attrac- 

 tiveness of form. Grateful recognition should be 

 accorded to Nature for its able championship of the 

 necessity of scientific research and the claims of 

 workers in science. It was pointed out to mc recently 

 how closely the first number published fifty years ago 

 resembles in form and contents the current numbers. 

 Evidently great care and thought were given to the 

 design and scope of the journal. In offering con- 

 gratulations to the Editor and publishers, I should like 

 to express, the hope that Nature may be as useful and 

 successful in the next fifty years. 



Right Hon. H. A. L. Fisher, M.P., President of the 

 Board of Education. — Nature is one of the authorita- 

 tive voices of current scientific opinion. It provides the 

 members of the scientific community with the means 

 of publishing newly discovered facts of general interest 

 and importance, and enables them to follow the 

 current work and thought in their own and in other 

 branches of science. To those dwelling on the out- 

 skirts of the scientific community, the non-profes- 

 sional men of science, it furnishes a valuable 

 resume of scientific news and progress, while in its 

 columns the general public can never fail to find 

 intelligible references to facts of interest and import- 

 ance. For fifty years Nature has most successfully 

 performed this important function. Victory in the 

 war could not have been achieved without the aid of 

 science ; and the vigorous pursuit of science, both pure 

 and applied, is essential to the welfare of the nation 

 in peace. And now we find that a general interest 

 in science has been reawakened by its successes in 

 the war, while our universities and colleges are 

 crowded with students whose keenness has never 

 been equalled, and from whom science will recruit the 

 workers lost during the war. I trust that a new era 

 of progress and prosperity has opened for British 

 science, and I hope that in this era Nature will con- 

 tinue to play its important part and to add to its 

 success of the past. 



M. Camille Flammarion. — La collection de Nature 

 brille aux meilleurs rayons de la biblioth^que 

 de mon observatoire. C'est une opulente ft 

 precieuse mine scientifique, admirablement com- 

 pos6e. Dfes la premiere page, du 4 novembre i86g, 

 nous avons sous les yeux son vaste programme, 

 dans un Eloquent commentaire de Huxley sur les 

 aphorismes de Goethe : " Nature ! We are surrounded 

 and embraced by her : powerless to separate ourselves 

 from her, powerless to penetrate beyond her." Oui, 

 la Nature nous enveloppe de ses merveilles ; la Science 

 a pour mission de I'interpreter. " Un demi-si^cle 

 passera," ajoutait Huxley, "et nous jugcrons notre 

 oeuvre." Ce demi-siecle est pass6. La Redaction de 

 cette revue pent fitre fi^re de son oeuvre. J'ajouterai 

 que Nature est sou vent en avance de plus d'un demi- 

 siecle. Ainsi, dans ce premier volume, de 1869, on 

 NO. 261I, VOL. 104] 



peut voir, p. 304, une carte du "railway tunnel under 

 the Channel," p. 407, une dissertation sur la 

 4^ dimension, et p. 14, une 6tude de Norman Lockyer 

 sur la couronnc solaire, le tout en avence sur nos 

 realisations actuelles ! Felicitations et voeux pour un 

 nouveau demi-sifecle. 



Right Hon. Sir Auckland Geddes, K.C.B., 

 G.B.E., M.P., President of the Board of Trade. 

 —I should like to congratulate Nature on its long 

 life now extending to half a century, and to wish it 

 an even more vigorous and fruitful existence in the 

 future. Any influence which at the present time 

 directs the English mind to the facts of science is of 

 service to the State. Industry, which we must now 

 develop both in scientific economy and in volume to 

 a level undreamed of in the days of our national pre- 

 war wealth, needs every inspiration which science can 

 give. Nature is one of the possible vehicles of that 

 inspiration, and therein lies its immediate practical 

 importance. Of its importance to science it is un- 

 necessary for me to speak. 



Dr. J. W. L. Glaisher, F.R.S.— I was an under- 

 graduate in my third year of residence when I saw 

 the first number of Nature in a shop-window, and I 

 remember well its purchase and my interest in 

 reading it, and how a little group of undergraduates 

 criticised its name and discussed its contents and 

 future. I now contemplate with admiration the 

 hundred and three volumes and their services to 

 science, and I am impressed by their perfect uni- 

 formity and absolute consistency of purpose. The 

 "Notes" date from the first number, and have sup- 

 plied scientific information, English and foreign, such 

 as did not exist before, and is still unique. From the 

 first, astronomy occupied a prominent place, and the 

 "Astronomical Column" has been a most valuable 

 feature frorr the early 'seventies. The reviews and 

 accounts of the British Association meetings have 

 always seemed to me especially important. The study 

 and teaching of natural science in the University of Cam- 

 bridge were in 1869 just making a feeble beginning. 

 I read in the first number of Nature that Mr. Bonney, 

 of St. John's (still among us), would lecture on natural 

 science, and that Mr. Trotter (Coutts Trotter of the 

 "Coutts Trotter Studentship," who died in 1887) 

 would lecture on electricity, magnetism, and botany, 

 and the Editor added the remark that he congratulated 

 the University on the increased desire for instruction 

 in these subjects, but asked whether the number of 

 men in the University competent to teach them was 

 so small that it was found necessary to entrust elec- 

 tricity and botany to the same lecturer. Well, so it 

 was. Trotter, a fellow of Trinity, had just returned 

 from a course of study in Germany, and had induced 

 the: college to let him give these lectures. Though a . 

 mathematical man, I (perhaps induced by the para- 

 graph in Nature) was one of the three persons who 

 attended Trotter's lectures on physiological botany, 

 then an absolutely new subject in the University. The 

 other two students soon ceased to attend, and I was 

 the sole lecturce until Trotter considered that he had 

 carried the subject far enough. This illustrates the 

 vast change that fifty years have made in the University. 

 Not many persons are now living who can remember 



