DISCOVERY 



213 



successful, and the most popular of all was the Aus- 

 tralian meeting in 1914. 



The meetings of the British Association have been 

 the scene of many famous discussions. New theories 

 or discoveries have rarely been disclosed for the first 

 time at these meetings, but often they have been 

 announced there for the first time in a popular or 

 semi-popular form, or described for the first time so 

 that discussion is possible. In that age — " so rich in 

 minds of the first order in science . . . the golden age, 

 not of art or of poetry, not of drama or of adventure, 

 but of science ... an epoch distinguished by a 

 galaxy of men who made it great, and who, whether 

 the world recognised it or not, were great men " (as 

 Silvanus Thompson described it) — discoveries were 

 innumerable and a few of them only can be singled 

 out here. In i860 at Oxford there was the famous 

 discussion on Darwin's Origin of Species, in which 

 occurred Huxley's retort to Bishop Wilberforce of 

 which ever\^ book that describes it gives a different 

 version. In 1877 at Plymouth Sir William Preece 

 demonstrated various types of the newly-invented 

 telephone. In 1888 at Bath Fitzgerald announced 

 Hertz's verification of Clerk Maxwell's theory of 

 electro-magnetic waves. In 1894 at Oxford Ramsay 

 described the isolation of the new gas argon, and at 

 the same meeting Sir Oliver Lodge gave one of the 

 earliest demonstrations of wireless. At Dover in 1899 

 Sir Joseph Thomson described " the existence of masses 

 smaller than the atoms " — the electrons. At Leicester 

 in 1907 Duddell, in giving an evening lecture on the 

 arc and spark in radio-telegraphy, showed experiments 

 which formed the foundation for continuous-wave 

 telegraphy. At the Oxford meeting in 1894 there was 

 a discussion on Maxim's flying machine, and it is 

 interesting to note that this early example of the 

 aeroplane was then described by Lord Kelvin as " a 

 kind of child's perambulator with a sunshade magnified 

 eight times." Two recent discussions of outstanding 

 importance were that on the Constitution of the Atom, 

 opened by Sir Ernest Rutherford at Leicester in 1907, 

 and that on the Age of the Earth opened at Edinburgh 

 last year by Lord Rayleigh. 



The public lectures also have been an important 

 feature of the Association's meetings These were 

 given by scientists not to fellow-scientists, but to the 

 general public or to working-men. One of the earliest 

 of these was given away back in 1838, by Adam Sedg- 

 wick, the geologist, at the meeting at Newcastle, and is 

 described by Sir John Herschel in a letter as 

 follows : 



" But this was nothing compared to an out-of-door 

 speech, address, or lecture, which Sedgwick read on 

 the sea-beach at Tynemouth to some 3,000 or 4,000 

 colliers, . . . which has produced a sensation as is 



not likely to die away for years. I am told by ear- and 

 eye-witnesses that it is impossible to conceive the 

 sublimity of the scene, as he stood on the point of a 

 rock a little raised, to which he rushed as if by a sudden 

 impulse, and led them on from the scene around them 

 to the wonders of the coal-country below them, thence 

 to the economj' of a coal-field, thence to their relations 

 with the coal-owners and capitalists, then to the great 

 ]irinciples of morality . . . and happiness and their 

 own future prospects. ..." 



For these lectures, of course, the very best men were 

 selected, for if there are few things better than a 

 scientific lecture given by a man who says exactly what 

 he means, without confusion and without obscurity, 

 and saying neither too much nor too little, there are 

 few things worse than the opposite. Tyndall started 

 the series in 1867 with a lecture on " Matter and Force," 

 Huxley following with " A Piece of Chalk." Silvanus 

 Thompson was a past master at this work. In 1891 

 at Cardiff he spoke on the uses of electricity in mining 

 to a crowded audience of miners who were brought 

 by special trains to hear him speak ; again at Bradford 

 he spoke to an audience of 3,500 for an hour and three- 

 quarters, discussing the applications of electricity to 

 industry as a national question, and at the close 

 elicited a " manifestation of feeling . . . such as is 

 generally associated with a great political meeting, 

 rather than with a scientific lecture." The popular 

 lectures to the public are nowadays one of the most 

 delightful of the Association's activities, and one of 

 the best means of securing one part of the Association's 

 object. 



Mr. Howarth's book, from which the description 

 above has chiefly been obtained, is an exceedingly 

 interesting and informed account of the British 

 .Association's activities during the past ninety years. 

 The author, as secretary of the Association, has been 

 enabled to write from inside information. In addition 

 to accounts of the history and organisation of the 

 Association and the progress of science, the book 

 contains chapters dealing with the Association and 

 research, the Association and the state, a description 

 of some Association researches, and a discussion of its 

 present position, work, and prospects. There are 

 appendices showing the grants paid by the Association 

 in aid of research, and giving the dates and places of 

 the annual meetings with biographical notes of pre- 

 sidents and other prominent members. The illustra- 

 tions are a feature, and these include photographs of 

 eleven great scientists : Brewster, Vernon Harcourt, 

 Phillips, Murchison, Huxley, Tyndall, Sedgwick, 

 Whewell, Kelvin, Crookes, and Rayleigh. We like best 

 those of Phillips in his old-time Pickwickian costume, 

 of WTiewell, big and dour, almost a cross between 

 Beethoven and Liszt, and of Kelvin, gentle and serene. 



