112 LITERARY JUSTICE. 



can be offered against such an official trial of scientific 



O 



and technical performances, which supplies a kind of 

 hall mark and may easily be very injurious to the free 

 unfolding of science: it is indeed only admissible under 

 full control by the publicity of the seances, can then 

 however be very useful and stimulative. 



Through the admission of my memoir into the 

 "savants Strangers", and another essay published the 

 same year in PoggendorfFs Annalen "On electrical lines 

 and apparatus", which reproduced entire the contents 

 of the memoir so far as they had reference to under- 

 ground electrical lines, my priority in respect of various 

 scientific and technical achievements has been placed 

 beyond dispute. Nevertheless unwarranted claims to 

 certain of them were subsequently raised in divers 

 quarters. This leads me to make here a few remarks 

 on the need of an international literary tribunal, 

 which has in recent times come to be felt with in- 

 creasing acuteness. It must first of all be granted 

 that in the course of the last decennia it has become 

 ever more difficult, nay almost impossible, completely 

 to survey the vast mass of material contained in scienti- 

 fic and technological publications, in many different 

 languages moreover. It is also natural that those who- 

 are entirely absorbed in their own special work, 

 but especially those who actively co-operate in further- 

 ing the development of the technical application of 

 physical science, find but little leisure to make a 

 thorough study of the doings of others working on the 

 same or on related lines, even if masters of the several 



