LITERARY JUSTICE. 113 



languages, and that they in general have also little 

 inclination to turn their attention to the past. As 

 an example of this I might point to the most highly 

 gifted and copiously inventive physicist of any age, 

 Faraday. He got to know the insulation with pressed 

 gutta-percha only many years after its invention. 

 when it began to be employed in England for sub- 

 marine cables, the external protection of the insulated 

 conductor being secured by surrounding the latter 

 with iron wires. The surprising phenomena of electri- 

 cal charges, which Faraday observed in these cables, 

 induced him to publish an essay on the subject. When 

 du Bois-Reymond. however, sent him without further 

 comment a copy of my memoir presented to the French 

 academy. Faraday did not lose any time in following 

 up his first work with another, in which he cited the 

 relevant sections of my treatise, and made the decla- 

 ration that the priority both of the observation and 

 also of the explanation of the phenomena belonged to 

 me. Other English writers, as Wheatstone, Jerikin 

 and many others, have certainly not troubled them- 

 selves about either this declaration of Faraday's or 

 any of my other publications. 



In Germany the good custom formerly prevailed 

 of always prefacing the description of one's own 

 scientific or technical discoveries and inventions by 

 a description of the achievements of predecessors in 

 the same department, thereby giving the progress about 

 to be described its place in the historic evolution - 

 a custom, which unfortunately has never been observed 



OF THE 



UNIVERSITY 



