368 



NA TURE 



[August i8, 1904 



•chemistry of nitrogen. In this discussion it is expected 

 that Prof. Aschan, of Hclsingfors, Prof. Pope, Prof. 

 Kipping, and Prof. Wedekind will take part. In 

 ■connection with this section the apparatus of Messrs. 

 Hevcock and Neville will be on view, and in the 

 University Chemical Laboratory Prof. Liveing has set 

 up an echelon specfroscope with which the Zeeman 



-effect and other interesting phenomena in spectroscopy 

 will be exhibited. 



In Section I, devoted to physiology, in addition to 

 the communications already announced, Mr. Hankin, 

 pathologist at -Agra, will on Saturday morning deliver 

 a lecture on the spread of plague. Thursday after- 

 noon will be devoted to the heart. Communications 

 from Prof. Sherrington and Miss Sowton on the 

 action of chloroform on the heart, from Dr. W. E. 

 Dixon on the action of alcohol on the heart, and 

 from Dr. G. A. Gibson on the disturbance of cardiac 

 rhythm will be made. Tuesday will be devoted 

 to physiological chemistry. Prof. Macallum, of 



'Toronto, will read a paper on the distribution of 

 potassium in animal and vegetable cells, and a com- 

 munication will be received from Prof. Kossel and 

 Mr. Dakin on protamines and a general discussion 



•on the nature of proteids. On Friday and Saturday 

 afternoons this section will hold no meetings, but the 

 Physiological and Psychological Societies will meet 

 on these days, so that members of the Association 



who desire can attend these meetings without missing 

 any of the papers communicated to the Association. 

 On Monday afternoon Prof. Schiifer, of Edinburgh, 

 will give an account of methods of artificial respiration 

 with a special view to the restoration of the apparently 

 drowned. This should be a specially interesting de- 

 monstration in view of Prof. Schafer's new method 

 for producing artificial respiration. The rest of 

 Monday afternoon will be devoted to other demon- 

 strations. The physiological laboratory will be open 

 for inspection by members of the Association during 



■the meetings. 



In the Cavendish Laboratory an exhibition of ap- 

 paratus and objects of scientific interest will be open 

 during the session. Of special interest is the ex- 

 hibition of geometrical models under Section A, and 



-of models made at various schools under the education 

 section. Among the more interesting of the models 

 under Section A may be mentioned a plaster model 

 of the general cubic surface with its twenty-seven 

 lines drawn on it; and a model of Sir Robert Ball's 

 cylindroid. The Cambridge Scientific Instrument 



•Company is exhibiting a collection of scientific 

 instruments, among which an oscillograph will be 

 shown in action at certain times during the session. 

 The Cambridge Universitv Press is exhibiting a 

 large_ number of books. Mr. C. E. S. Phillips will 



•exhibit a new automatic vacuum pump, and Prof. 

 J. A. Fleming will show an instrument for measuring 

 wave-lengths used in wireless telegraphy. 



Dr. W. N. Shaw will show the " microbarograph " 

 which he and Mr. Dines have recently invented. 

 This instrument is for measuring and recording small 

 and rapid variations of atmospheric pressure, while 

 slow changes are allowed to escape. Various forms 

 of self-recording meteorological instruments will be 

 shown by Messrs. Lander and Smith. A temperature 

 recording instrument is set up at the entrance to the 

 Guildhall by the Cambridge Scientific Instrument 



"Company. In addition to the room used for the main 

 part of the exhibition, the Cavendish and other 



laboratories will be open for inspection during the 

 session, where members can see the ordinary apparatus 

 in use and study the methods of scientific teaching 



.■adopted in the university. 



NO. 1816, VOL. 70] 



Inaugural Address by the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour, 

 D.C.L., LL.D., M.P., K.R.S., Chancellor of the 

 University of Edinburgh, President of the Associ- 

 ation. 



Reflections suggested by the Newt Theory of Matter. 

 The meetings of this great Society have for the most part 

 been held in crowded centres of population, where our 

 surroundings never permit us to forget, were such forgetful- 

 ness in any case possible, how close is the tie that binds 

 modern science to modern industry, the abstract researches 

 of the student to the labours of the inventor and the 

 mechanic. This, no doubt, is as it should be. The inter- 

 dependence of theory and practice cannot be ignored without 

 inflicting injury on both ; and he is but a poor friend to 

 either who undervalues their mutual cooperation. 



Vet, after all, since the British Association exists for the 

 advancement of science, it is well that now and again wp 

 should choose our place of gathering in some spot where 

 science rather than its applications, knowledge, not utility, 

 are the ends to which research is primarily directed. 



If this be so, surely no happier selection could have been 

 made than the quiet courts of this ancient University. For 

 here, if anywhere, we tread the classic ground of physical 

 discovery. Here, if anywhere, those who hold that physics 

 is the true Scieiitia Scientiarum , the root of all the sciences 

 which deal with inanimate nature, should feel themselves 

 at home. For, unless I am led astray by too partial an 

 affection for my own University, there is nowhere to be 

 found, in any corner of the world, a spot with which have 

 been connected, either by their training in youth, or by 

 the labours of their maturer years, so many men eminent 

 as the originators of new and fruitful physical conceptions. 

 I say nothing of Bacon, the eloquent prophet of a new era ; 

 nor of Darwin, the Copernicus of Biology; for my subject 

 to-day is not the contributions of Cambridge to the general 

 growth of scientific knowledge. I am concerned rather 

 with the illustrious line of physicists who have learned or 

 taught within a few hundred yards of this building — a line 

 stretching from Newton in the seventeenth century, through 

 Cavendish in the eighteenth, through Young, Stokes, Max- 

 well, in the nineteenth, through Kelvin, who embodies an 

 epoch in himself, down to Rayleigh, Larmor, J. J. Thom- 

 son, and the scientific school centred in the Cavendish 

 laboratory, whose physical speculations bid fair to render 

 the closing years of the old century and the opening years 

 of the new as notable as the greatest which have preceded 

 them. 



Now what is the task which these men, and their 

 illustrious fellow-labourers out of all lands, have set them- 

 selves to accomplish? To what end led these "new and 

 fruitful physical conceptions " to which I have just re- 

 ferred? It is often described as the discovery of the " laws 

 connecting phenomena." But this is certainly a mislead- 

 ing, and in my opinion a very inadequate, account of the 

 subject. To begin with, it is not only inconvenient, but 

 confusing, to describe as " phenomena " things which do 

 not appear, which never have appeared, and which never 

 can appear, to beings so poorly provided as ourselves with 

 the apparatus of sense perception. But apart from this, 

 which is a linguistic error too deeply rooted to be easily 

 exterminated, is it not most inaccurate in substance to 

 say that a knowledge of Nature's laws is all we seek when 

 investigating Nature? The physicist looks for something 

 more than what, by any stretch of language, can be de- 

 scribed as " co-e.\istences " and '* sequences " between so- 

 called " phenomena." He seeks for something deeper than 

 the laws connecting possible objects of experience. His 

 object is physical reality : a reality which may or may not 

 be capable of direct perception : a reality which is in any 

 case independent of it : a reality which constitutes the 

 permanent mechanism of that physical universe with which 

 our immediate empirical connection is so slight and so 

 deceptive. That such a reality exists, though philosophers 

 have doubted, is the unalterable faith of science ; and were 

 that faith per impossibile to perish under the assaults of 

 critical speculation, science, as men of science usually 

 conceive it, would perish likewise. 



If this be so, if one of the tasks of science, and more 

 particularly of physics, is to frame a conception of the 

 physical universe in its inner reality, then any attempt lo 



