December i, 1904J 



NA TURE 



105 



the university for Ulster, began earlier than that happy 

 part of my life. My father, born in County Down, was for 

 four years (1810 to 1S14I a student of the University of 

 Glasgow, and in his Irish home, first as professor of mathe- 

 matics in the newly-founded Royal Belfast Academical In- 

 stitution, his children were taught to venerate the Uni- 

 versity of Glasgow. One of my earliest memories of those 

 old Belfast days is of 1S29, when the joyful intelligence 

 came that the Senate of the University of Glasgow had 

 conferred the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws on my 

 father. Two years later came the announcement that the 

 faculty of Glasgow College had elected him to the pro- 

 fessorship of mathematics. 



In 1834, two years after my father was promoted from 

 Belfast to the Glasgow professorship of mathematics, 1 

 became a matriculated member of the University of Glasgow-. 

 To this day I look back to Prof. William Ramsay's lectures 

 on Roman antiquities and readings of Juvenal and Plautus 

 as more interesting than many a good stage play that I 

 have seen in the theatre. Happy it is for our university, 

 and happy for myself, that his name, and a kindred spirit, 

 are with us still in my old friend and colleague, our senior 

 professor, George Ramsay. Greek, under Sir Daniel 

 Sandford and Lushington, logic under Robert Buchanan, 

 moral philosophy under William Fleming, natural philo- 

 sophy and astronomy under John Pringle Xichol, chemistry 

 under Thomas Thomson (a very advanced teacher and in- 

 vestigator), natural history (zoology and geology) under 

 William Couper. were, as I can testify by my own experi- 

 ence, all made interesting and valuable to the students of 

 Glasgow University in the 'thirties and 'forties of the nine- 

 teenth century. Sandford, in teaching his junior class the 

 Greek alphabet and a few characteristic Greek words, and 

 the -Scottish pronunciation of Greek, gave ideas, and some- 

 thing touching on philology, to very young students, which 

 remains on their minds after the heavier grammar and 

 syntax which followed have vanished from their know- 

 ledge. Logic was delightfully unlike the Collegium 

 Logicum described bv Goethe to the young German student 

 through the lips of Mephistopheles. Even the dry bones of 

 predicate and syllogism were made by Prof. Buchanan very 

 lively for six weeks among the students of logic and rhetoric 

 in Glasgow College sixty-seven years ago ; and the delicious 

 scholastic gibberish of " Barbara, Celarent " remains with 

 them an amusing recollection. A happy and instructive 

 illustration of the inductive logic was taken from Wells's 

 " Theory of Dew," then twenty years old. My predecessor 

 in the natural philosophy chair. Dr. Meikleham, taught his 

 students reverence for the great French mathematicians, 

 Legendre, Lagrange, Laplace. His immediate successor in 

 the teaching of the natural philosophy class. Dr. Xichol, 

 added Fresnel and Fourier to this list of scientific nobles ; 

 and by his own inspiring enthusiasm for the great French 

 school of mathematical physics, continually manifested in 

 his experimental and theoretical teaching of the wave theory 

 of light and of practical astronomy, he largely promoted 

 scientific study and thorough appreciation of science in the 

 University of Glasgow. In this hall you see side by side 

 two memorial windows presented to the university to mark 

 permanently its admiration of three men of genius, John 

 Caird. John Pringle Nichol, and his son, John Xichol, who 

 lived in it, and worked for it and for the world, in the two 

 departments of activity for W'hich universities exist, the 

 humanities and science. .As far back as 1818 to 1830 

 Thomas Thomson, the first professor of chemistry in the 

 University of Glasgow, began the systematic teaching of 

 practical chemistry to students, and by aid of the faculty 

 of Glasgow College, which gave the site and the money 

 for the building, realised a well equipped laboratory, which 

 preceded. I believe, bv some vears Liehig's famous labor- 

 atory of Giessen, and was, I believe, the first of all the labor- 

 atories in the world for chemical research and the practical 

 instruction of universitv students in chemistry. That was 

 at a time when an imperfectly informed public used to 

 regard the University of Glasgow as a stagnant survival 

 of mediaevalism and to call its professors the Monks of the 

 Molendinar I 



The university of Adam Smith, James Watt, and Thomas 

 Reid was never stagnant. For two centuries and a quarter 

 it has been very progressive. Nearly two centuries ago it 

 had a laboratory of human anatomy. Seventy-five years 



Ts'O 183T, VOL. 71] 



ago it had the first chemical students' laboratory. Sixty- 

 five years ago it had the first professorship of engineering of 

 the British Empire. Fifty years ago it had the first physical 

 students' laboratory — a deserted wine cellar of an old pro- 

 fessorial house, enlarged a few years later by the annexation 

 of a deserted examination room. Thirty-four years ago, 

 when it migrated from its four hundred years old site ofif 

 the High Street of Glasgow to this brighter and airier hill- 

 top, it acquired laboratories of physiology and zoology, too 

 small and too meagrely equipped. And now every univer- 

 sity in the world has, or desires to have, laboratories of 

 human anatomy, of chemistry, of physics, of physiology, of 

 zoology. Within the last thirty years laboratories of engineer- 

 ing, of botany, and of public health have been added to some 

 of the universities of the British Empire, with highly bene- 

 ficent results for our country and the world. All these the 

 University of Glasgow now has. During the last fifty years 

 our university has grown in material greatness and in work- 

 ing power to' an extent that its most ardent well-wishers in 

 the first half of the nineteenth century could scarcely have 

 imagined possible. Two successive legislative commissions 

 (185S and 1880) have re-formed its constitution and 

 broadened its foundations, and added to its financial 

 resources, and admitted women to its membership, with all 

 the privileges of students and graduates. Splendidly liberal 

 subscriptions bv the people of Glasgow and by a world-wide 

 public outside,' backed bv powerful aid from the Xational 

 Treasury, enabled the university, on leaving its ancient site, 

 to enter into the grand group of buildings on Gilmorehill, 

 in which it has happily lived ever since. A few years later 

 the generous gift of 45,000/. by the late Marquis of Bute 

 built the hall called after his name, in which we are now 

 met. At the same time the adjoining Randolph Hall and 

 staircase were built bv a portion of the legacy left to the 

 universitv bv the late >Ir. Randolph. The Queen Margaret 

 College and grounds were presented to the university by 

 Mrs. Elder, who also added largely to the endowment of the 

 engineering professorship, and founded the professorship of 

 naval architecture. Other generous donors have given an 

 engineering laboratory with lecture-rooms, and botanical 

 buildings, and great and much needed extensions in the 

 anatomical department. The Carnegie Trust and the prin- 

 cipal's universitv equipment scheme are at present provid- 

 ing two new buildings ; one of these is for extensions in the 

 medical school. The other, in which I naturally take the 

 most personal interest, is for the natural philosophy depart- 

 ment, including lecture-rooms and a physical laboratory, all 

 designed and at present being realised under the able 

 direction of my successor in the natural philosophy chair, 

 Prof. Andrew Grav. 



In the province of the humanities the workmg power of 

 the universitv for instruction and research has been largely 

 augmented during the last fifty vears by the foundation of 

 new professorships, conveyancing. English language and 

 literature. Biblical criticism, clinical surgery, climcal 

 medicine, historv (in mv opinion the most important of all in 

 the literary department), pathology, political economy. In 

 mathematics and in the science of dead matter, professor- 

 ships of naval architecture and geology : lectureships of elec- 

 tricity of physics, and of phvsical chemistry ; and demon- 

 stratorships and official assistantships in all departments 

 have most usefully extended the range of study, and largely 

 strengthened the working corps for research and instruction. 

 I venture to congratulate the city of Glasgow on having 

 for her god-daughter a university so splendidly equipped and 

 so admirably provided with workers. 



WKIVEHSARX MEETIXG OF THE ROYAL 

 SOCIETY'. 



THE report of the council of the Royal Societv' was 

 presented at the anniversary' meeting held yester- 

 I dav \ovember 30, and the president, Sir William 

 Huggins, K.C.B., F.R.S., delivered the annual 



The council refers to the second general assembly of 

 the International Association of Academies last Whit- 

 suntide as one of the chief events of the year. At the 



