SEPT. 15, 1882.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 



By the Editor. 



MAXY seem to consider that our remarks on the 

 British Association (regarded generally and also 

 with special reference to the recent meeting at Southamp- 

 ton) have been unduly critical. We are open to correc- 

 tion, and if any one can show that the work actually done 

 by the Association during the fifty years of its existence 

 has been worth the time and labour bestowed on the 

 meetings, to say nothing of some £100,000 paid by 

 members and associates, we shall be very glad, in the 

 interests of science, to hear the evidence. For ourselves, 

 we must confess we cannot see that the progress of science 

 is in any way advanced by these gatherings, while the 

 dignity of science certainly seems to be impaired when in 

 one city after another. Science comes before thepublic saying, 

 " -Vo(/-you shall have something good, "and retires presently 

 from a wearied community, which has heard very little that 

 has been intelligible and scarce anything worth remembering. 

 It seems to us that, despite the utter silliness of the Times' 

 article from which we quoted last week, that desire to pose 

 before gaping thousands as men who have done something 

 no one else has done, which the writer of that article seemed 

 to recognise in the suggested visit to Canada, must have 

 something to do with these annual gatherings. Nor does 

 the idea seem altogether absent that what that insolent 

 writer said of Americans may be true of the citizens of the 

 "good old towns" visited by Science. Men of science 

 seem to think that " if they talk sense, they will be listened 

 to ; if they talk nonsense, they will be listened to all the 

 same, and with the same degree of intelligent appreciation." 

 Of course, in the utterly oflensive sense in which these words 

 were applied to Canada (and by implication to America gene- 

 rally, which has sent its men of science to Canada this year) 

 this is very far from being true ; but it is perfectly true tliat 

 men of science who talk, as nearly all did at Southampton 

 this year, in jargon which is as a strange tongue to their 

 hearers, may talk nonsense and be no more understood 

 than when they talk sense, in the same jargon : for neither 

 one nor the other would be understood at all. If Sir 

 William Thomson, for example, had spoken of ecliptic 

 tides, or of electric tides, his remarks would have been 

 quite as well appreciated by ninety-nine hundredths of 

 his hearers as when he spoke of elliptic tides (meaning 

 really tlie monthly waxing and waning of the moon-raised 

 tides, as the moon moves nearer to us or farther from us 

 in her elliptic orbit). In Canada, or the United States, or 

 in Australia, where audiences are most thoroughly com- 

 petent to distinguish sense from nonsense, " ecliptic tides " 

 would have done as well as "elliptic tides," because both 

 expressions belong to scientific jargon, and jargon quite 

 inexact and misleading, since what Sir W. Thomson called 

 an elliptic tide is not properly speaking a tide at all, and is 

 assuredly not elliptic. There is, probably, not a man, 

 however, in an audience so perplexed, but would be able to 

 perplex men of science equally by the jargon of his own 

 trade or profession. 



Of the benefit these gatherings do to science genei-ally 

 we may gain some inkling by noting that in all the daily 

 jiapersw^f'r ahKunlities were published professedly as reports 

 of tlie meeting. We need not go beyond the case just 

 referred to— Sir W. Thomson's JMscourso on the Tides. 

 The 'fillies' report of that discourse, for instance, was 

 altogether absurd. Passages absolutely essential to the 

 sense were omitted by the reporters, in calm confidence 

 that the nonsense thus produced would bo read " with the 

 same degree of intelligent appreciation as the rest" And 



the confidence was justified. The weekly journals (even 

 some which, like the English Mechanic, claim a scientific 

 character), as placidly quoted this egregious nonsense, as if 

 it had been profound science. Handed to a leading-article 

 manufacturer, the report became the basis of one of those 

 " Times articles," in which the British public places such 

 implicit reliance, wherein, on this occasion, ordinary cyclo- 

 pa'dic information about tidal waves was associated with 

 certain electric tides (an ingenious new reading for the 

 ecliptic absurdity), of which Sir W. Thomson, with sly 

 sarcasm, remarked that they were " not to be wondered 

 at." Yet the sarcasm touches himself also ; for if such 

 nonsense as electric tides " need not be wondered at " in a 

 Times leader, the fault resides nearly as much in the jargon 

 of the scientist as in the ignorance and presumption of the 

 article-monger. How is the world to be taught science if 

 men of science will not even try to speak intelligibly \ 



Even, however, those papers which have united in 

 raising the chorus of adulation, have been obliged to admit 

 that the splendours of science which they laud have not 

 been altogether appreciated. " We hear the meeting 

 spoken of as tame," says the Times, in an article almost as 

 silly, though not quite so offensive, as the other ; " but we 

 have not been able to detect any sign of greater tameness 

 than usual " [which is very likely]. . . " The Southampton 

 meeting is no unworthy successor of the York Jubilee. . . 

 Southampton has not been treated to the mere leavings 

 of that great feast ! . . British science has suffered no 

 collapse after the excitement of last year ! " . . [As if science 

 were likely to collapse because there was a scientific 

 meeting a year ago.] " It is marvellous how, year after 

 year, there should be such abundant evidence of continued 

 and fresh work ! . . We cannot detect any signs of falling- 

 otr this year in any respect. Workers seem as eager as ever 

 to come forward and tell what they have been doing," ic, 

 ■usque ad nauseam. The unscientific public, it should 

 have been added, seem just as unwilling to listen to them, 

 which also " is not to be wondered at," since most of them 

 will not express themselves in clear and simple language. 



SIR W. THOMSON ON THE TIDES. 



SIR WILLIAM THOMSON'S discourse upon the Tides 

 at the Friday evening discourse, during the meeting 

 of the British Association, was not, properly speaking, a 

 lecture. A series of statements, scarcely connected 

 at all, were poured upon the audience, to the manifest be- 

 wilderment of all except a few, who, having been acquainted 

 with the subject and Sir W. "Thomson's way of presenting 

 it Viefore, were entertained by liis vivacity and by his 

 obvious enjoyment of the effect he was producing. The 

 real subject of the lecture was reached some five or ten 

 minutes before the discourse came to a close. 



Under these circumstances it is absolutely impossible to 

 give either a full report or an abstract of the lecture, in 

 such a form as would interest the majority of our readers. 

 We propose, then, simply to select such statements from 

 the lecture as are of intrinsic interest or importance, with- 

 out attempting to do what the lecturer did not care to do — 

 to present tliem, that is, as parts of a clear, consistent, and 

 luminous discussion of the subject of the tides : — 



From calculations by Mr. (.i. II. Darwin, the rigidity of 

 the earth, as a whole, is aliout the same as that of a globe of 

 homogeneous steel as large as the earth. 



In some parts of the earth no lunar tides can be recog- 

 nised, only a rise and fall occurring, either once or twice in 

 a solar day. These may depend on meteorological causes, 

 as on winds, or changes of temperature, due to solar 



