December 7, 1893] 



NA TURE 



135 



treasurer's accounts having presented their report, the secretary 

 read the list of Fellows elected and deceased since the last 

 anniversary. The Society has lost eleven fellows on the home 

 list, and two foreign members, as follows : — 



Henry Tibbats Stainton, December 2, 1892, aged 70. 



Sir Richard Owen, December 18, 1892, aged 89. 



Dr. James Jago, January 18, 1893, aged 77. 

 . Henry Francis Blanford, January 23, 1893, aged 58. 



Thomas William Fletcher, February i, 1893, aged 84. 



Edward Walker, March 2, 1893, aged 73. 



Alphonse de Candolle, March 28, 1893, aged 87. 



Henry Edward Stanley, Earl of Derby, April 21, 1893, 

 aged 67. 



Ernest Edward Kummer, May 14, 1893, aged 84. 



Rev. Charles Pritchard, May 28, 1893, aged 85. 



Dr. John Rae, July 22, 1893, aged 80. 



Thomas Hawksley, September 23, 1893, aged 86. 



Sir Andrew Clark, Bart., November 6, 1893, aged 67. 



The Society next proceeded to elect the officers and council 

 for the ensuing year. A list of those selected for election was 

 given in Nature, November 9. 



Lord Kelvin, the President, then delivered his address. After 

 briefly referring to the work -of the Standing Committees, he con- 

 tinued as follows : — 



Not the least important of the scientific events of the year is 

 the publication, in the original German and in an English trans- 

 lation by Prof. D. E. Jones, of a collection of Hertz's papers 

 describing the researches by which he was led up to the 

 experimental demonstration of magnetic waves. For this work 

 the Rumfoi'd Medal of the Royal Society was delivered to Prof. 

 Hertz three years ago by my predecessor, Sir George Stokes. 

 To fully appreciate the book now given to the world, we must 

 carry our minds back to the early days of the Royal Society, 

 when Newton's ideas regarding the forces which he saw to be 

 implied in Kepler's laws of the motions of the planets and of 

 the moon were frequent subjects of discussion at its regular 

 meetings, and at perhaps even more important non-official con- 

 ferences among its Fellows. 



In 1684 the senior secretary of the Royal Society, Dr. Halley, 

 went to Cambridge to consult Mr. Newton on the subject of 

 the production of the elliptic motion of the planets by a central 

 force,^ and on December 10 of that year he announced to the 

 Royal Society that he "had seen Mr. Newton's book, 'De 

 Motu Corporum.'" Some time later, Halley was requested to 

 " remind Mr. Newton of his promise to enter an account of his 

 discoveries in the register of the Society," with the result that 

 the great work " Philosophias Naturalis PrincipiaMathematica" 

 was dedicated to the Royal Society, was actually presented in 

 manuscript, and was communicated at an ordinary meeting of 

 the Society on April 28, 1686, by Dr. Vincent. In acknow- 

 ledgment, it was ordered "that a Setter of thanks be written 

 to Mr. Newton, and that the printing of his book be referred to 

 the consideration of the council ; and that in the meantime the 

 book be put into the hands of Mr. Halley, to make a report 

 thereof to the council." On May 19 following, the Society 

 resolved that "Mr. Newton's ' Philosophias Naturalis Principia 

 Mathematica ' be printed forthwith in quarto, in a fair letter ; 

 and that a letter be written to him to signify the Society's 

 resolution, and to desire his opinion as to the volume, cuts, &c." 

 An exceedingly interesting letter was accordingly written to 

 Newton by Halley, dated London, May 22, 1686, which we 

 find printed in full in Weld's " History of the Royal Society" 

 (vol. i. pp. 308-309). But the council knew more than the 

 Royal Society at large of its power to do what it wished to do. 

 Biology was much to the front then, as now, and the publication 

 of Willughby's book, " De Historia Piscium," had exhausted 

 the Society's finances to such an extent that the salaries even of 

 its officers were in arrears. Accordingly, at the council meet- 

 ing of June 2, it was ordered that "Mr. Newton's book be 

 printed, and that Mr. Halley undertake the business of look- 

 ing after it, and printing it at his own charge, which he engaged 

 to do." 



It seems that at that time the office of treasurer must have been 

 in abeyance ; but with such a senior secretary as Dr. Halley 

 there was no need for a treasurer. 



Halley, having accepted copies of Willughby's book, which 



■"• Whewell's " History of the Inductive Sciences." vol. ii. p. 77. 



NO. 1258, VOL. 49] 



had been offered to him in lieu of payment of arrears of salary^ 

 due to him, cheerfully undertook the printing of the " Principia " 

 at his own expense, and entered instantly on the duty of editing 

 it with admirable zeal and energy, involving, as it did, ex- 

 postulations, arguments, and entreaties to Newton not to cut 

 out large parts of the work which he wished to suppress" as 

 being too slight and popular, and as being possibly liable to 

 provoke questions of priority. It was well said by Rigaud, in 

 his "Essay on the first publication of the Principia," that 

 "under the circumstances it is hardly possible to form a sufficient 

 estimate of the immense obligation which the world owes in this 

 respect to Halley, without whose great zeal, able management, 

 unwearied perseverance, scientific attainments, and disinterested 

 generosity the 'Principia' might never have been published." ^ 

 Those who know how much worse than " law's delays" are the 

 troubles, care^, and labour involved in bringing through the 

 press a book on any scientific subject at the present day will 

 admire Halley's success in getting the " Principia" published 

 within about a year after the task was committed to him by the 

 Royal Society two hundred years ago. 



When Newton's theory of universal gravitation was thus 

 made known to the world Descartes' Vortices, an invention 

 supposed to be a considerable improvement on the older 

 invention of crystal cycles and epi-cycles from which it was 

 evolved, was generally accepted, and seems to have been re- 

 garded as quite satisfactory by nearly all the philosophers of 

 the day. 



The idea that the sun pulls Jupiter, and Jupiter pulls back 

 against the sun with equal force, and that the sun, earth, moon, 

 and planets all act on one another with mutual attractions, 

 seemed to violate the supposed philosophic principle that matter 

 cannot act where it is not. Descartes' doctrine died hard among 

 the mathematicians and philosophers of continental Europe ; 

 and for the first quarter of last century belief in universal 

 gravitation was an insularity of our countrymen. 



Voltaire, during a visit which he made to England in 1727, 

 wrote: "A Frenchman who arrives in London finds a great 

 alteration in philosophy, as in other things. He left the world 

 full ; he finds it empty. At Paris you see the universe composed 

 of vortices of subtle matter ; at London we see nothing of the 

 kind. With you it is the pressure of the moon which causes the 

 tides of the sea ; in England it is the sea which gravitates 

 towards the moon. . . . You will observe also that the sun, 

 which in France has nothing to do with the business, here comes 

 in for a quarter of it. Among you Cartesians all is done by 

 impulsion : with the Newtonians it is done by an attraction of 

 which we know the cause no better "-• Indeed, the Newtonian 

 opinions had scarcely any disciples in France till Voltaire as- 

 serted their claims on his return from England in 1728. Till 

 then, as he himself says, there were not twenty Newtonians out 

 of England.'' 



In the second quarter of the century sentiment and opinion in 

 France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy experienced a great 

 change. " The mathematical prize questions proposed by the 

 French Academy naturally brought the two sets of opinions 

 into conflict." A Cartesian memoir of John Bernoulli was the 

 one which gained the prize in 1730. It not infrequently hap- 

 pened that the Academy, as if desirous to show its impartiality, 



1 It is recorded in the Minutes of Council that the arrears of salary due 

 to Hooke and Halley were resolved to be paid by copies of Willughby's 

 work. Halley appears to have assented to this unusual^ proposition, but 

 Hooke wisely " desired six months' time to consider of the acceptance of 

 such payment." . . 



The publication of the "Historia Piscium," m an edition of 500 copies, 

 cost the Society £400. It is worthy of remark, as illusirative of the small 

 sale which scientific books met with in England at this period, that, a con- 

 siderable time after the publication ol Willughby's work, Halley was 

 ordered by the Council to endeavour to effect a sale of several copies with 

 a bookseller at Amsterdam, as appears in a letter from Halley requesting 

 Boyle, then at Rotterdam, to do all in his power to give publicity to the 

 book. When the Society resolved on Halley's undertaking to measure a 

 degree of the earth, it was voted that " he be given £^0 or fifty ' Books of 

 Fishes.'" (Weld's " History of ihe Royal Society," vol. i. p. 310.) 



- " The third [book] I now design to suppress. Philosophy is such an 

 impertinently litigious lady that a man had as good be engaged in lawsuits 

 as have to do with her. I found it so formerly, and now I am no sooner 

 come near her again but she gives me warning. The first two books with- 

 out the third will not so well bear the title of ' Philosophia; Naturalis Prin- 

 cipia Mathematica,' and therefore I have altered it to this, ' De Motu 

 Corporum Libri duo' ; but, upon second thoughts, I retain the former title.^ 

 'Twill help the sale of the book, which I ought not to diminish now 'tis yours." 

 {Ibid., p. 311.) 



3 Ibid., p. 310. 



■1 Whewell's " History of the Inductive Sciences," vol. 11. pp. 202-203. 



5 Ibid., vol. ii. p. 201. 



