144 COUNT RUMFORD. 



parently insignificant subjects which sometimes occupy 

 the scientific inind. They are not aware that in sci- 

 ence the most stupendous phenomena often find their 

 suggestion and interpretation in the most minute 

 that the smallest laboratory fact is connected by in- 

 dissoluble ties with the grandest operations of Nature. 

 Thus, the iridescences of the common soap-bubble, 

 subjected to scientific analysis, have emerged in the 

 conclusion that stellar space is a plenum filled with 

 a material substance, capable of transmitting motion 

 with a rapidity which would girdle the equatorial earth 

 eight times in a second; while the tremors of this sub- 

 stance, in one form, constitute what we call light, and, 

 in all forms constitute what we call radiant heat. Not 

 seeing this connection between great and small; not 

 discerning that as regards the illustration of physical 

 principles there is no great and no small, the wits, con- 

 sidering the small contemptible, permitted sarcasm to 

 flow. But these things have passed away, otherwise it 

 would not be superfluous to remind this audience, as 

 a case in point, that the splendour which in the form 

 of the electric light now falls upon our squares and 

 thoroughfares, has its germ and ancestry in a spark 

 so feeble as to be scarcely visible when first revealed 

 within the walls of this Institution. 



It is with reluctance that I take the slightest ex- 

 ception to what my American friends have written 

 regarding Eumford and his achievements. But what 

 they have written induces me to assure them that the 

 scientific men of England are not prone to stinginess 

 in recognising the merits of their fellow-labourers in 

 other lands; and had Rumford, instead of accom- 

 plishing none of his work in the land of his birth, 

 accomplished the whole of it there, his recognition 



