372 WOMAN IN SCIENCE 



observations which, supplied the material for his epocli- 

 making work on bees, entitled Nouvelles Observations sur 

 les Abeilles. So accurate are his descriptions of the habits 

 of the winged creatures, to the study of which he devoted 

 the best years of his life, that one would think his great 

 work was the production, not of a man who had been blind 

 for a quarter of a century, when he wrote it, but of one 

 who was gifted with exceptional keenness of vision and 

 powers of observation. 



"As long as she lived," exclaimed the great naturalist 

 after his trusty Aimee's death, "I was not sensible of the 

 misfortune of being blind. ' ' Nay, more. During her life- 

 time, when, though sightless, he was always so happy in 

 his work, he went so far as to aver that he would be miser- 

 able were he to recover his eyesight. ' ' I should not know, ' ' 

 he declared, "to what an extent a person in my condition 

 couid be beloved. Besides, to me, my wife is always young, 

 fresh and pretty, which is no light matter. " He could 

 truly say of her, as Wordsworth said of his sister Dorothy, 



"She gave me eyes, she gave me ears, 



###*** 



And love and thought and joy." 



We hear much of the achievements of Galvani and Fara- 

 day in the domain of electricity and electromagnetism, but 

 little is said of the women to whom they were so greatly 

 indebted for their success and fame. 



It was Galvani 's wife who first directed his attention to 

 the convulsions of a frog's leg when placed near an elec- 

 trical machine. This induced him to make those celebrated 

 investigations which led to the foundation of a new science 

 which has ever since been identified with his name. 



It was Mrs. Marcet's works on science especially her 

 Conversations on Chemistry that inspired Faraday with a 

 love of science and blazed for him that road in chemical 



