434 



NATURE 



[September 4, 1890 



most illustrious Fellow of the Royal Society ; Thoresby, anti- 

 quarian and topographer ; Benjamin Wilson, painter, and indus- 

 trious contributor to the development of electrical science ; 

 William Iley, the eminent surgeon, and friend and counsellor 

 of Priestley ; Sadler, political economist and philanthropist ; 

 the brothers Sheepshanks — Richard, the astronomer, and John, 

 the accomplished patron of the arts, and munificent contributor 

 to our national art treasures ; Edward Baines, whose conspicuous 

 talents and energy developed a small provincial journal into one 

 of the most powerful public organs of the country ; his talented 

 sons, of whom not the least conspicuous and highly respected was 

 the late Sir Edward Baines. I might swell this voluminous list by 

 reference to illustrious members of suchfamiliesas that of Denison, 

 of Beckett, of Lowther, but the men I have referred to fitly 

 illustrate the remarkable array of worthies whose careers have 

 shed lustre upon the town in or near which they were born. Yet 

 that illustration would be altogether incomplete if I failed to 

 speak of one whose career and works alone would suffice to 

 place Leeds in the foremost rank of those English towns which 

 can claim as their own men whose course of life and whose 

 achievements have secured their pre-eminence among our illus- 

 trious countrymen. Needless to say that I refer to Joseph 

 Priestley, born within six miles of Leeds, whose name holds 

 rank among the foremost of successful workers in science ; who, 

 by brilliant powers of experimental investigation, rapidly 

 achieved a series of discoveries which helped largely to dispel j 

 the shroud of mystery surrounding the art of alchemy, and to 

 lay the foundation of true chemical science. An ardent student 

 of the classics, of Eastern languages, and of divinity, a zealous 

 exponent of theological doctrines which marred his career as 

 divine and instructor, he early displayed conspicuous talents for 

 the cultivation of experimental science, which he pursued with 

 ardour under foi-midable difficulties. His acquaintance with 

 P'ranklin probably developed the taste for the study of electric 

 science which led him to labour successfully in this direction 

 and the publication, in 1767, of his valuable work on "The 

 History and Present State of Electricity, with Original Experi- 

 ments," secured for him a prominent position among the workintj 

 Fellows of the Royal Society. His connection with Mill Hill 

 Chapel, in 1768, appears to have given rise accidentally to his 

 first embracing the experimental pursuit of what formerly was 

 termed pneumatic chemistry, the foundation of which had been 

 laid by Cavendish's memorable contribution, in 1766, to the 

 Philosophical Transactions, on carbonic acid and hydrogen. 

 Priestley's first publication in pneumatic chemistry, on "Im- 

 pregnating Water with Fixed Air" (carbonic acid), attracted 

 great attention ; it was at once translated into French, and the 

 College of Physicians addressed the Lords of the Treasury 

 thereon, pointing out the advantages which might result from 

 the employment, by men at sea, of water impregnated with 

 carbonic acid gas, as a protective against, or cure for, scurvy. 



Six years later Priestley investigated the chemical effects pro- 

 duced on the air by the burning of candles and the respiration 

 of animals, and, having demonstrated that it was thereby dimin- 

 ished in volume and deteriorated, he showed that living plants 

 possessed the power of rendering air, which had been thus de- 

 teriorated, once more capable of supporting the combustion of a 

 candle. At about this time Priestley received very advantageous 

 proposals to accompany Captain Cook upon his second expedition 

 to the South Seas ; but when about to prepare for his departure 

 he learned from Sir Joseph Banks that objections against his ap- 

 pointment, on account of the great latitude of his religious 

 principles, had been successfully urged by some ecclesiastic 

 member of the Board of Longitude. In 1773 the Royal Society 

 awarded Priestley the Copley Medal for a remarkable paper 

 entitled "Observations on Different Kinds of Air," and in that 

 year he became librarian and literary companion to the Earl of 

 Shelburne (afterwards Marquis of Lansdowne), and thereby 

 secured special advantages in the pursuit of his scientific 

 researches. 



With respect to his departure from Leeds, he expressed him- 

 self as having been very happy there " with a liberal, friendly, 

 and harmonious congregation, to whom my services (of which I 

 was not sparing) were very acceptable. Here I had no un- 

 reasonable prejudices to contend with, so that I had full scope 

 for every kind of exertion ; and I can truly say that I always 

 considered the office of a Christian minister as the most honour- 

 able of any upon earth, and in the studies proper to it I always 

 took the greatest pleasure." During the next five years he pub- 

 lished as many volumes describing the results of important ex- 



INO. 1088, VOL. 42] 



periments on air. After investigating the properties of nitric 

 oxide, and applying it to the analysis of air, Priestley, in 1774, 

 discovered and carefully studied oxygen, which he obtained by 

 the action of heat upon the red oxide of mercury. He was the 

 first to prepare and study sulphurous acid, carbonic oxide, 

 nitrous oxide, hydrochloric acid {marine acid air), and the 

 fluoride of silicon, and carried out important researches on the 

 properties of hydrogen, and of other gases previously but little 

 known. His great quickness of perception and power of ex- 

 periment led him to the achievement of many novel and 

 important results ; but one cannot help contrasting his somewhat 

 random search after new discoveries with the close logical 

 reasoning and philosophic spirit which guided and pervaded the 

 remarkable researches of him whose departure from amongst us 

 since the last gathering of this Association is so universally de- 

 plored — of the great discoverer of the universal law of the 

 conversion of energy, James Prescott Joule. I could not add to 

 the judicious and graceful reference to his work which Sir Henry 

 Roscoe was privileged to make, in the last year of that philo- 

 sopher's valuable life, when presiding over the recent meeting of 

 the Association in the town which gloried in numbering Joule 

 among its citizens ; but I may, perhaps, be per nitted to express 

 the sanguine hope that the desire of the scientific world to 

 secure the establishment of an international memorial fitly com- 

 memorative of his great life-work may be realized in the most 

 ample manner. 



The wide scope of the admirable discourse delivered by Owen 

 in this town thirty-two years ago affords an interesting illus- 

 tration of the delight which men whose best energies are devoted 

 to the cultivation of one particular branch of science take in the 

 results of the labours of their fellow-workers in other departments, 

 and in their achievements in contributing to the general ad- 

 vancement of our knowledge of Nature's laws and of their 

 operations. It is to this bond of intimate union between all 

 workers in pure science that we owe (he instructive reviews of the 

 progress made in different departments of science, with which 

 we have often been presented at our annual gatherings. On the 

 other hand, those men, from time to time selected to fill the dis- 

 tinguished office of President, whose lives have been mainly 

 devoted to the practical utilization of the results of scientific 

 research, and to the extension in particular directions of the con- 

 sequent resources of civilization, seize with keen pleasure the 

 opportunity afforded them of directing attention to the triumphs 

 achieved in the application, to the purposes of daily life, of the 

 great scientific truths established by such illustrious labourers in 

 the fields of pure science as Newton, Dalton, Faraday, and 

 Joule. The wide and constantly-extending domain of applied 

 science presents, even to the superficial observer, a continually 

 varied scene ; not a year passes but some great prize falls to the 

 lot of one or other of its explorers, and some apparently insignifi- 

 cant vein of treasure, struck upon but a few years back, is 

 rapidly opened out by cunning explorers, until it leads to a mine 

 of vast wealth, from which branch out in many directions new 

 sources of power and might. 



Among the branches of science in the practical applications of 

 which the greatest strides have been made since the Association 

 met at Leeds in 1858, is electricity. That year witnessed the 

 accomplishment of the first great step towards the establishment 

 of electrical communication between Europe and America, by the 

 laying of a telegraph- cable connecting Newfoundland with 

 Valencia. Through this cable a message of thirty one words 

 was shortly afterwards transmitted in thirty-five minutes ; an 

 achievement which, though exciting great enthusiasm at the time, 

 scarcely afforded promise of the succession of triumphs of ocean- 

 telegraphy which have since surpassed the wildest dreams of the 

 pioneers in the realms of applied electricity. 



The development of the electric telegraph constitutes a never- 

 failing subject of the liveliest interest. The experiments made 

 by Stephen Gray, in 1727, of transmitting electrical impulses 

 through a wire 700 feet long ; by Watson, twenty years after- 

 wards, of transmitting frictional electricity through many thou- 

 sand feet of wire, supported by a line of poles, on Shooter's 

 Hill, in Kent ; and by Franklin^ who carried out a similar ex- 

 periment at Philadelphia, — although they were followed by 

 many other interesting and philosophical applications of fric- 

 tional electricity to the transmission of signals — were not produc- 

 tive of really practical results. The work of Galvani and of 

 Volta was more fruitful of an approach to practical telegraphy 

 in the hands of Sommering and of Coxe, while the researches of 



