AND MODERN PHYSICS. 87 



Ilka impact has lia measure, 



Ne'er a ano hao I ; 

 Yet a* the lads they measure me, 



Or, at least, they try. 



Gin a body meet a tody 



Altogether free, 

 How they travel afterwards 



Wo do not always see. 

 Ilka problem has its method 



By analytics high ; 

 For me, I ken na ano o* them, 



Hut what the waur am I If 



Another task, which occupied much time, from 

 1874 to 1879, was the edition of the works of Henry 

 Cavendish. Cavendish, who was great-uncle to the 

 Chancellor, had published only two electrical papers, 

 but ho had left some twenty packets of manuscript 

 on Mathematical and Experimental Electricity. 

 These were placed in Maxwell's hands in 1874 by the 

 Duke of Devonshire. 



Niven, in his preface to the collected papers 

 dealing with this book, writes thus : 



"This work, published in 1879, has had the effect of 

 increasing the reputation of Cavendish, disclosing as it does 

 the unsuspected advances which that acute physicist had 

 made in the Theory of Electricity, especially in the measure- 

 ment of electrical quantities. The work is enriched by a 

 variety of valuable notes, in which Cavendish's views and 

 results are examined by the light of modern theory and 

 methods. Especially valuable are the methods applied to the 

 determination of the electrical capacities of conductors and 

 condensers, a subject in which Cavendish himself showed con- 

 siderable skill both of a mathematical and experimental 

 character. 



