Scientific Lectures. 61 



SCIENTIFIC LECTIJRE-IY. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE TEA-KETTLE 



By Prof. BENjAMxisr Silliman, op New Haven, Ct. 



The fourth weekly lecture of the course was delivered "Wednesday 

 evening, December 16, 1868, before the American Institute, at Stein- 

 way Hall, by Prof. Silliman, of Yale College. Judge Daly, Vice- 

 President of the Institute, introduced the lecturer to the audience in 

 a few appropriate remarks. 



Prof. Silliman said I feel much hesitation, and no little diffidence 

 in my own power, after such a flattering introduction as your worthy 

 President has given me here, and possibly some of the ladies may 

 have occasion to laugh at the exposition of the principles of philoso- 

 phy by means of a tea-kettle. My theme, as you will observe, is 

 introduced to you by a very homely title, but I trust before we are 

 done with it, you will have an opportunity to see that it covers a 

 pretty wide scope of human knowledge, and that there has grown 

 out of its study one of the most signal of all the great steps which 

 mankind has made in the arts of life, and in all the progress of this 

 progressive age. Some of you may have seen a beautiful picture 

 which was painted some twenty years ago, by an English artist, in 

 which a beautiful boy, apparently ten or twelve years of age, is 

 kneeling on a chair with his finger placed on the lid of a tea-kettle, 

 while his eye is obviously wholly engrossed by the phenomenon which 

 are taking place before him, and his mind completely so, and he does 

 not heed the presence of a stately lady, dressed in the costume of a 

 hundred years ago, who, holding a watch before him, says : " Do you 

 know that it is a whole hour that you have been here in this listless 

 way, holding the saucers and the spoons in the steam that is coming 

 out of the spout of that tea-kettle, and counting the drops of the 

 water that has fallen from them, when you might be engaged in some 

 useful occupation?" This lad was James Watt, the distinguished 



