INTRODUCTION. 



41 



deeper conviction that all mental work is living, indi- 

 vidual, and of endless variety. To stimulate individual 

 thought, to bring about life and change, is nowadays felt 

 to be quite as necessary as to insist on method, system, 

 and order. Prompted by this conviction, the last fifty 

 years have done much to facilitate intellectual inter- 

 change, and to record the historical development of all 

 branches of science. 



This object has been promoted in three different ways, j 

 The French, who in the beginning of the period were the 'pj.gj^J^-^yg^g 

 masters in science, led the way by founding a series of -n^gf ' 

 periodicals devoted to the development of separate sciences, beginning 

 Germany followed, and still later England.^ A living tury? '^^'^' 



1 The oldest scientific periodical 

 is the ' Journal des Savants, ' which 

 was started in 1665 in Paris ; next 

 to it comes probably Rozier's ' Ob- 

 servations sur la Physique' (1771), 

 continued under the title ' Journal 

 de Physique' (1778, continued with 

 interruptions from 1794 - 95 till 

 1823). In opposition to this 

 journal, which defended the older 

 phlogistic theories in chemistry, 

 the ' Annales de Chimie ' were 

 started in 1789 by Berthollet, 

 Guyton de Morveau, and Fourcroy, 

 as an organ of Lavoisier's ideas. 

 In 1788 the Societe Philomatique 

 started its ' Bulletin,' and in 1795 

 the 'Journal de I'Ecole Poly- 

 technique' started its influential 

 career. No such periodicals existed 

 for special sciences at that time in 

 any other country, if we perhaps 

 except the ' Transactions of the 

 Eoyal Linnsean Society,' which 

 started in 1791. 'Nicholson's 

 Journal' started in 1797; the 

 ' London, Edinburgh, and Dublin 

 Philosophical Magazine and Journal 

 of Sciences ' had its origin in Til- 

 loch's ' PhilosojDhical Magazine'; but 



the first journal devoted specially 

 to mathematical sciences in England 

 was probably the ' Cambridge Ma- 

 thematical Journal,' started in 1839. 

 In the meantime the number of 

 scientific journals in France had 

 grown enormously. In Germany we 

 have Crell's 'Chemische Annalen' 

 (1778), Gehlen's ' Allgemeines Jour- 

 nal fur Chemie' (1803), Gren's 

 'Journal der Physik' (1790), Gil- 

 bert's 'Annalen der Physik' (1799), 

 Zach's 'Monatliche Correspondenz ' 

 (1800), Crelle's 'Journal flir die 

 reine und augewandte Mathematik ' 

 (1826), and many others, all peri- 

 odicals of the first importance. The 

 ' Transactions of the Royal Society,' 

 which of course contain many of 

 the valuable scientific contributions 

 of this country, can nevertheless 

 hardly be looked upon as a reposi- 

 tory of the work of English mathe- 

 maticians and physicists of the 

 period in question, not even as 

 much as the Memoirs of the Paris 

 Academy in France. In Great 

 Britain a new centre of scientific 

 and literary work existed during 

 the latter part of the last century 



