384 



NATURE 



[August 20, 1891 



greater in quantity, and in the long run more exact in quality, can 

 be turned out, by patient and conscientious labour without much 

 genius, by the gradual improvement of instrumental means, by 

 the skill acquired by practice, and by the steady drudgery of 

 routine. Paris has long had one form of such an institution, in 

 the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, and has been able to im- 

 pose the metric system on the civilised world in consequence. 

 It can also point to the classical determinations of Regnault as 

 the fruits of just such a system. Berlin is now starting a sinailar 

 or a more ambitious scheme for a permanent national physical 

 institute. Is it not time that England, who in physical science, 

 I venture to think, may in some sort claim a leading place, 

 should be thinking of starting the same movement ? 



The Meteorological and Magnetic Observatory at Kew (in the 

 inauguration of which this Association took so large a part) is a 

 step, and much useful quantitative work is done there. The new 

 Electric Standardizing Laboratory of the Board of Trade is 

 another and, in some respects perhaps, a still closer appproxi- 

 mation to the kind of thing I advocate. But what I want to see 

 is a much larger establishment erected on the most suitable site, 

 limited by no speciality of aim nor by the demands of the commer- 

 cial world, furnished with all appropriate appliances, to be amended 

 and added to as time goes on and experience grows, and invested 

 with all the dignity and permanence of a national institution : a 

 Physical Observatory, in fact, precisely comparable to the Green- 

 wich Observatory, and aiming at the very highest quantitative 

 work in all departments of physical science. That the arts would 

 be benefited may be assumed without proof. It is largely the 

 necessity of engineers that has inspired the amount of accuracy 

 in electrical matters already attained. The work and appliances 

 of the mechanical engineer eclipse the present achievements of 

 the physicist in point of accuracy, and it is by the aid of the 

 mechanician and optician that precision even in astronomy has 

 reached so high a stage. There is no reason why physical deter- 

 minations should be conducted in an amateur fashion, with com- 

 paratively imperfect instruments, as at present they mostly are. 

 Discoveries lie along the path of extreme accuracy, and they will 

 turn up in the most unexpected way. The aberration of light 

 would not have been discovered had not Bradley been able to 

 mea-ure to less than I part in 10,000 ; and. what a brilliant and mo- 

 mentous discovery it was ! He was aiming at the detection of stellar 

 parallax, but the finite velocity of light was a bigger discovery than 

 any parallax. This is the type of result which sometimes lurks in 

 the fifth decimal, and which confers upon it an importance 

 beside which the demands of men who wish to serve the taste 

 and the pocket of the British public sink into insignificance. 



In a National Observatory accuracy should be the one great 

 end : the utmost accuracy in every determination that is decided 

 on and made. Only one thing should be more thought of than 

 the fifth significant figure, and that is the sixth. The con- 

 sequences flowing from the results may safely be left ; such as 

 are not obvious at once will distil themselves out in time. And 

 the great army of outside physicists, assured of the good work 

 being done at headquarters, will (to speak again in astronomical 

 parable) cease from peddling with taking transits or altitudes, 

 and will be free to discover comets, to invent the spectroscope, 

 to watch solar phenomena, to chemically analyse the stars, to 

 devise celestial photography, and to elaborate still more celestial 

 theories ; all of which novelties in their maturity may be 

 handed over to the National Observatory, to be henceforth incor- 

 porated with, and made part of, its routine life ; leaving the ad- 

 vance guard and skirmishers free to explore fresh territory, 

 secure in the knowledge that what they have acquired will be 

 properly surveyed, mapped, and utilised, without further atten- 

 tion from them. As to the practical applications, they may in 

 any case be left to take care of themselves. The instinct of 

 humanity in this direction, and the so-called solid gains asso- 

 ciated with practical achievements, will always secure a sufficient 

 number of acute and energetic workers to turn the new territory 

 into arable land and pasture adapted to the demands of the 

 average man. The labour of the agriculturist in rendering soil 

 fertile is, of course, beyond praise ; but it is not the 

 work of the pioneer. As Mr. Huxley eloquently put it, 

 when contrasting the application of science with the ad- 

 vance of science itself, speaking of the things of com- 

 mercial value which the physical philosopher sometimes dis- 

 covers : — "Great is the rejoicing of those who are benefited 

 thereby, and, for the moment, science is the Diana of all the 

 craftsmen. But even while the cries of jubilation resound, and 

 this flotsam and jetsam of the tide of investigation is being 



NO. 



I 138, VOL. 44] 



turned into the wages of workmen and the wealth of capitalists, 

 the crest of the wave of scientific investigation is far away on its 

 course over the illimitable ocean of the unknown." 



I have spoken of the work of the National Laboratory as 

 devoted to accuracy. It is hardly necessary to say that it will 

 be also the natural custodian of our standards, in a state fit for 

 use and for comparison with copies sent to be certified. Else 

 perhaps some day our standard ohm may be buried in a brick 

 wall at Westminster, and no one living may be able to recall 

 precisely where it is. 



But, in addition to these main functions, there is another, 

 equally important with them, to which I must briefly refer. 

 There are many experiments which cannot possibly be conducted 

 by an individual, because forty or fifty years is not long enough 

 for them. Secular experiments on the properties of materials — 

 the elasticity of metals, for instance ; the effect of time on mole- 

 cular arrangement ; the influence of long exposure to light, or to 

 heat, or to mechanical vibration, or to other physical agents. 



Does the permeability of soft iron decay with age, by reason 

 of the gradual cessation of its Amperian currents ? Do gases 

 cool themselves when adiabatically preserved, by reason ot im- 

 perfect elasticity or too many degrees of freedom of their mole- 

 cules? Unlikely, but not impossible. Do thermo-electric pro- 

 perties alter with time ? And a multitude of other experiments 

 which appear specially applicable to substances in the solid 

 state-^a state which is. more complicated, and has been less in- 

 vestigated, than either the liquid or the gaseous : a state in 

 which time and past history play an important part. 



Whichever of these long researches requires to be entered on, 

 a national laboratory, with permanent traditions and a con- 

 tinuous life, is undoubtedly the only appropriate place. At such 

 a place as Glasgow the exceptional magnitude of a present 

 occupant may indeed inspire sufficient piety in a successor to 

 secure the continuance of what has been there begun ; but in 

 most college laboratories, under conditions of migration, in- 

 terregnum, and a new regime, continuity of investigation is 

 hopeless. 



I have at any rate said enough to indicate the kind of work 

 for which the establishment of a well-furnished laboratory with 

 fully equipped staff is desirable, and I do not think that we, as 

 a nation, shall be taking our proper share of the highest scien- 

 tific work of the world until such an institution is started on its 

 career. 



There is only one evil which, so far as I can see, is to be 

 feared from it : if ever it were allowed to impose on outside 

 workers as a central authority, from which infallible dicta were 

 issued, it would be an evil so great that no amount of good 

 work carried on by it could be pleaded as sufficient mitiga- 

 tion. 



If ever by evil chance such an attitude were attempted, it 

 must rest with the workers of the future to see that they permit 

 no such shackles ; for if they are not competent to be inde- 

 pendent, and to contemn the voice of authority speaking as mere 

 authority, if their only safeguard lies in the absence of necessity 

 for struggle and effort, they cannot long hope to escape from the 

 futility which surely awaits them in other directions. 



I am thus led to take a wider range, and, leaving temporary 

 and special considerations, to speak of a topic which is as yet 

 beyond the pale of scientific orthodoxy, and which I might, more 

 wisely, leave lying by the roadside. I will, however, take the 

 risk of introducing a rather ill-favoured and disreputable looking 

 stranger to your consideration, in the belief— I might say, in 

 the assured conviction — that he is not all scamp, and that his 

 present condition is as much due to our long-continued neglect 

 as to any inherent incapacity for improvement in the subject. 



I wish, however, strenuously to guard against its being sup- 

 posed that this Association, in its corporate capacity, lends. its 

 countenance to, or looks with any favour on, the outcast. What 

 I have to say— and after all, it will not be much— must rest on 

 my own responsibility. I should be very sorry for any adven- 

 titious weight to attach to my observations on forbidden topics 

 from the accident of their being delivered from this chair. The 

 objection at which I have now hinted is the only one that seems 

 to me to have any just weight, and on all other counts I am will- 

 ing to incur such amount of opprobrium as naturally attaches to 

 those who enter on a region where the fires of controversy are 

 not extinct, and in which it is quite impossible, as well as un- 

 desirable, for everyone to think alike. 



It is but a platitude to say that our clear and conscious aim 

 should always be truth, and that no lower or meaner standard 



