Vlll 



Preface 



proved, as a consequence of his recluse and self-centred life there are 

 perhaps few investigators of the first rank of whose work and aims and 

 procedure we have now more complete knowledge than of his. 



The additions appended by Maxwell, in the form of thirty-five notes 

 of elucidation and commentary, on modern lines, relating to Cavendish's 

 results and methods, constitute an example of powerful and elegant 

 relevant original investigation such as could hardly have been carried 

 through by anyone else. 



Advantage has been taken of the present reprint of the Electrical 

 Researches, as constituting Volume I of a definitive edition of the Scientific 

 Writings of Henry Cavendish, to add a few brief annotations and references 

 such as were needed to bring Clerk Maxwell's commentary up to date. 

 These notes, where appended to Cavendish's text, are enclosed in curved 

 brackets to distinguish them from Maxwell's own. As examples, reference 

 may be made to pp. 374, 413, 422. The printing of the original edition had 

 probably proceeded at intervals, and the final consolidation must have 

 gone on during Prof. Maxwell's last illness in the summer of 1879. Thus it 

 has now been possible to improve the headings of the chapters and sections, 

 and the headlines of the pages, so as to convey a clearer and more rapid 

 view of the nature and content of the text. The index and table of contents 

 have been improved. 



Apart from his permanent contributions to experimental laws, it is 

 possible to maintain that the theoretical views of Cavendish should now 

 command on historical grounds even more interest than they could excite 

 in 1878, when the Electrical Researches were made public in complete 

 form by Clerk Maxwell. At that time attention was largely concentrated 

 on the elucidation of the electric field, and the mode of transmission of 

 electrical influence from one body to another. The formal settlement of 

 that range of problems on the lines of the Faraday-Maxwell theory has 

 now transferred investigation to the sources of electric influence; and 

 problems of the distribution of electrons in conducting and insulating 

 bodies, their relation to the electrically polarisable molecules of matter, 

 their function in conduction and in radiation, even the exploration of 

 crystals in atomic detail by radiations of molecular wave-length, are now 

 opening out. These problems all involve interaction in a binary medium, 

 electrons and molecules controlling activities in an aether; it is now an 

 affair of relations of the field of transmission with electrically polar or 

 polarisable molecules which are its sources; and though this is very different 

 from Cavendish's idea of a uniform electric fluid pervading and inter- 

 acting with material substances by mere attraction, yet the degree of 

 success that had been attained by the earliei and simpler mode of repre- 

 sentation can become again by contrast a subject of historical scientific 

 interest. The title of one of Lord Kelvin's best-known memoirs, "^ 

 atomized," is evidence for this view. 



