MEMOIR OF DANIEL TREADWELL. 



459 



upon a similar plan of construction; and very soon after you called upon me with a letter of 

 introduction from Captain Lefroy. 



At this interview I stated, according to my original conception, that the ratio of resistance 

 would be in the inverse ratio of the diameter plus a quantity derived from the diminution of th« 

 thickness. This plus quantity will, as you will perceive, just make up the difference between the 

 simple inverse ratio and the inverse square ; and I stated to you at the time that this might be 

 the case, though 1 did not demonstrate it. You thought it would not. The difference between 

 us then was rather one of form than of substance. You said it must be as the inverse square ; 

 and it was then and will be hereafter my belief, unless you say to the contrary, that you had 

 come to this estimate of the subject from your own original investigation, without having seen 

 Barlow's previous demonstration ; for when I first mentioned Barlow's paper, and told where it 

 could be found, you did not seem to be aware of its existence. I had forgotten the substance of 

 it, and did not see it myself in London, nor afterwards, until after I had made the demonstration 

 and illustration in my memoir. 



Thus, you see, I wish you to take the credit which I think belongs to you, of being an origi- 

 nal discoverer of the principle as much as Barlow, and, shall I say, myself, although he was first 

 in point of time by some years. And if this statement will be of any use to you in your 

 controversy at the War Office, pray use it there. . . . 



Daniel Treadwell. 



In July, 1852, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in order to raise funds 

 to defray the expense of their forthcoming publications, voted to request several gen- 

 tlemen, members of the Academy, to deliver each one lecture during the ensuing 

 winter on subjects agreeable to themselves. The committee who had charge of this 

 arrangement, addressing Mr. Treadwell, " express their confident hope that you will 

 give them early notice of your consent to render this valuable service to the 

 Academy." 



In responding to this call, Mr. Treadwell took for his subject "The Relations 

 of Science to the Useful Arts." The following abstract indicates his method of treat- 

 ing it: — 



The superior excellence of the ancients in the "fine arts" he fully acknowledges; "the 

 higher genius which has impressed itself upon the stone remains still above modern reach." 

 But, on the other hand, there was among the Romans an entire absence of inorganic power in 

 giving motion to the instruments by which all the operations of the useful arts are performed. 

 They were without a water-wheel till the time of Augustus, and had no wind-mill till brought 

 into Europe by the Crusaders in the eleventh century. The grain for bread was generally 

 ground by men for a century later than Augustus, as fully proved by the numerous hand-mills 

 discovered in the ruins of Pompeii. Iron and steel were known ; but the most singular defect 

 of the ancients in metallurgy was their ignorance of the uses to which cast iron may be applied. 



" Why," says Professor Treadwell, " did not the Greeks or the Romans invent the steam- 

 engine or the spinning frame ? They had Socrates, Plato, Seneca, and many metaphysicians and 

 moralists. . . . But it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the improvement of the useful 

 arts has never at any time been the vocation of the philosophers. . . . But, luckily for us, the 



