September 8, 1898] 



NA TURE 



449 



some little coils there, ponder on the blaze ol li^ht thai has 

 been shed over the whole world from the dimly-lighted cupboard 

 in which those dusty coils now He. Then he may realise that 

 while the earth as a magnet has endured for all time, the earth 

 as a tramway conductor may at no distant dale be relegated to 

 the class of temporary makeshifts, and that the raids of the 

 feudal baron into the agricultural fields of his neighbours were 

 not more barbarous than the alarms and excursions of the 

 tramway engineer into the magnetic fields of his friends. 



A very important consideration in connection with the rapid 

 development of physical inquiry is the possibility of extending 

 Dur power of assimilating current physical knowledge. For so 

 wide have grown the limits of each branch of physics, that it 

 has become necessary to resort to specialisation if we desire to 

 widen further the region of the known. On the other hand, 

 so interlinked are all sections of physics, that this increase of 

 specialisation is liable to hinder rather than assist advance of the 

 highest order. 



An experimenter is, therefore, on the horns of a dilemma— 

 on the one hand, if he desires to do much he must confine him- 

 self more or less to one line of physical research, while, on the 

 other hand, to follow that line with full success requires a 

 knowledge of the progress that is lieing made along all kindred 

 lines. Already an investigator who is much engaged with 

 research can hardly do more as regards scientific literature than 

 read what he himself writes — soon he will not have time 

 to do even that. Division of labour and co-operation have, 

 therefore, become as important in scientific work as in other 

 lines of human activity. Like bees, some must gather material 

 from the flowers that are springing up in various fields of re- 

 search, while others must hatch new ideas. But, unlike bees, 

 all can be of the " worker" class, since the presence of drones 

 is unnecessary in the scientific hive. 



Englishmen have long been at a disadvantage in not possess- 

 ing any ready means of ascertaining what lines of physical 

 inquiry were being pursued in foreign countries — or, indeed, 

 even in their own. And, so far from making it easier to obtain 

 this information, 'our countrymen have, I fear, until quite 

 recently, been guilty of increasing the difficulty. For every 

 college, every technical school in Great Britain— and their 

 number will soon rival that of our villages — seems to feel it in- 

 cumbent on itself to start a scientific society. And in accord- 

 ance with the self-reliant character of our nation, each of these 

 societies must be maintained in absolute independence of every 

 other society, and its proceedings must be published separately, 

 and in an entirely distinct form from those of any similar body. 

 To keep abreast, then, with physical advance in our own 

 country is distinctly difficult, while the impossibility of main- 

 taining even a casual acquaintance with foreign scientific litera- 

 ture lays us open to a charge of international rudeness. 



There is, of course, the German Beibldtter, but the Anglo- 

 Saxon race, which has spread itself over so vast a portion of 

 the globe, is proverbially deficient in linguistic powers, and 

 consequently, till quite recently, information that was accessible 

 to our friends on the Continent was closed to many workers in 

 Great Britain, America, and Australia. 



Influenced by these considerations, the Physical Society of 

 London, in 1895, embarked on the publication of abstracts from 

 foreign papers on pure physics, and, as it was found that this 

 enterprise was much appreciated, the question arose at the end 

 of the following year, whether, instead of limiting the journals 

 from which abstracts were made to those appearing in foreign 

 countries, and the papers abstracted to those dealing only with 

 pure physics, the abstracts might not with advantage be en- 

 larged, so as to present a rhiinii! of all that was published in all 

 languages on physics and its applications. 



The first application of physics which it was thought should 

 be included was electrical engineering, and so negotiations were 

 opened with the Institution of Electrical Engineers. After 

 much deliberation on the part of the representatives of the two 

 societies, it was finally decided to start a monthly joint publica- 

 tion, under the management of a committee of seven, two of 

 whom should represent the Institution of Electrical Engineers, 

 two the Physical Society, and three the two societies jointly. 

 Science Abstracts was the name selected for the periodical, and 

 the first number appeared in January of this year. 



A section is devoted to general physics, and a separate section 

 to each of its branches ; similarly a section is devoted to general 

 electrical engineering, and a separate section to each of its more 



NO. 1506, VOL. 58] 



important sub-divisions. The value of Science Abstracts is 

 already recognised by the British Association as well as by the 

 Institution of Civil Engineers, for those societies make a liberal 

 contribution towards the expenses of publication, for which the 

 Physical Society and the Institution of Electrical Engineers are 

 responsible. 



At no distant date it is thought that other bodies may co- 

 operate with us, and we have hopes that finally the scheme 

 may be supported by the scientific societies of many Anglo- 

 Saxon countries. For our aim is to produce, in a single 

 journal, a monthly record in English of the most important 

 literature appearing in all languages on physics and its many 

 applications. This is the programme — a far wider one, be it 

 observed, than that of the Beibldtter — which we sanguinely 

 hope our young infant Science Abstracts will grow to carry out. 



The saving of time and trouble that will be eflected by the 

 publication of such a journal can hardly be over-estimated, and 

 the relief experienced in turning to a single periodical for know- 

 ledge that could hitherto be obtained solely by going through 

 innumerable scientific newspapers, in many different languages, 

 can only be compared with the sensation of rousing from a 

 distracting and entangled dream to the peaceful order of wakeful 

 reality. 



I therefore take this opportunity of urging on the members 

 of the British Association the importance of the service which 

 they can individually render to science by helping on an enter- 

 prise that has been started solely in its aid, and not for 

 commercial purposes. 



The greatness of the debt owed by industry to pure science is 

 often impressed on us, and it is pointed out that the compar- 

 atively small encouragement given by our nation to the develop- 

 ment of pure science is wholly incommensurate with the 

 gratitude which it ought to feel for the commercial benefits 

 science has enabled it to reach. This is undoubtedly true, and 

 no one appreciates more fully than myself how much commerce 

 is indebted to those whose researches have brought them— it 

 may be fame — but certainly nothing else. The world, however, 

 appears to rega'rd as equitable the division of reward, which 

 metes out tardy approbation to the discoverer for devising some 

 new principle, a modicum of the world's goods to the inventor 

 for showing how this principle can be applied, and a shower of 

 wealth on the contractor for putting the principle into practice. At 

 first sight, this appears like the irony of fate, but in fact the 

 world thus only proves that it is human by prizing the acquisi- 

 tion of what it realises that it stands in need of, and by valuing 

 the possession of what it is able to comprehend. 



Now is there not a debt which those who pursue pure science 

 are in their turn equally forgetful of— viz., the debt to the 

 technical worker or to some technical operation for the incep- 

 tion of a new idea? For purely theoretical investigations are 

 often born of technics, or, as Whewell puts it, "Art is the 

 parent, not the progeny, of science ; the realisation of principles 

 in practice forms part of the prelude as well as of the sequel 

 of theoretical discovery." I need not remind you that the 

 whole science of floating bodies is said to have sprung from the 

 solution by Archimedes of Hiero's doubt concerning the trans- 

 mutation of metals in the manufacture of his crown. In that 

 case, however, it was the transmutation of gold into silver, and 

 not silver into gold, that troubled the philosopher. 



Again, in the " History of the Royal Society at the End of 

 the Eighteenth Century," Thomson says regarding Newton, 

 "A desire to know whether there was anything in judicial 

 astrology first put him upon studying mathematics. He dis- 

 covered the emptiness of that study as soon as he erected a 

 figure ; for which purpose he made use of one or two problems 

 in Euclid. ... He did not then read the rest, looking upon it 

 as a book containing only plain and obvious things." 



The analytical investigation of the motion of one body_round 

 an attracting centre, when disturbed by the attraction of 

 another, was attacked independently by Clairault, D'Alembert, 

 and Euler, because the construction of lunar tables had such a 

 practical importance, and because large money prizes were 

 offered for their accurate determination. 



The gambling table gave us the whole Theory of Probability, 

 Bernoulli's and Euler's theorems, and the first demonstration of 

 the binomial theorem, while a request made to Montmort to 

 determine the advantage to the banker in the game of 

 " pharaon " started him on the consideration of how counters 

 could be thrown, and so led him to prove the multinomial and 

 various other algebraical theorems. Lastly, may not the 



