48 



PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 



We then find, in the department of cosmical 

 physics, certain great names primarily identified with 

 the improvement of instruments and methods, and 

 the extension of observation such names as Sabine 

 (1788-1883), with his labours on terrestrial magnetism 

 and gravity ; John Herschel (1792-1871) and Airy 

 (1801-92), with their development of the methods of 

 astronomical observation ; the Earl of Rosse (1800-67), 

 with his resolution of some of the nebulae by means 

 of his great telescope; down to that of Gill (1843- 

 1914), with his many activities, especially as H.M. 

 Astronomer at Cape Town, his promulgation of 

 the trigonometrical survey of South Africa, and the 

 establishment of a South African Association on 

 lines similar to our own. Regarding other depart- 

 ments of cosmical physics, we shall see in a later 

 chapter how the Association supported research on 

 tidal phenomena from its earliest days down to the 

 period of the great work of Sir George Darwin (1845- 

 1912) : how, also, our body has been identified, 

 peculiarly intimately, with the pioneering work of 

 John Milne|(1850-1913) in seismology; and constantly, 

 throughout its history, with progressive researches 

 in meteorology and climatology, which Whewell in 

 the address already cited (1841) considered * hardly 

 yet a science/ 



It is in connexion perhaps with astronomy that 

 the layman's imagination is most strongly moved 

 by the revelations of spectrum analysis. This great 

 branch of study brought the spectroscope to the aid of 

 the astronomers' telescope, and gave them the power 

 to investigate the constitution of certain celestial 

 bodies, as exemplified in the later part of the nine- 

 teenth century by the work of Huggins and Lockyer. 



