306 MEMORIES OF MY LIFE 



year, and had the reputation among his college 

 fellows of extraordinary sublety and insight as a 

 mathematician. He was perhaps a little too nice and 

 critical about his own work, losing time in over- 

 polishing, so that the amount of what he produced 

 was lessened. He wrote on the Kinetic Theory of 

 Gases. 



I may mention two anecdotes about him. He 

 had been a good Alpine climber and met with various 

 incidents. One was that he and a friend, F. Vaughan 

 Hawkins, set off at a good pace to vanquish some 

 new but not difficult peak, and passed on their way a 

 somewhat plodding party of German philosophers 

 bound on the same errand. One of Watson's shoes 

 had shown previous signs of damage, but he thought 

 he could manage to get on for a day or two longer if 

 he now and then covered it with an indiarubber 

 galosh that he then took with him for such emer- 

 gencies. It was a cumbrous addition, but succeeded 

 fairly, and he and his friend reached the top long 

 before the Germans, whom they thought no more 

 about. However, shortly after, a Swiss -German 

 newspaper gave a somewhat grandiose account of the 

 ascent of the mountain in question by Professors This 

 and That, in which it was remarked that the Pro- 

 fessors would have been the very first to reach its 

 summit had not two jealous Englishmen provided 

 themselves with " Gummi Schuhe" and so were able 

 to outstrip them. 



The other anecdote refers to the circumstances 

 under which Watson became Rector of a valuable 

 living, that of Berkswell, near Coventry. I repeat the 

 tale to the best of my remembrance as he told it me, 



