166 
NATURE 
| Dec. 14, 1882 
have evidence that good work is already being done, and in 
the others, of which we have as yet no information, there is no 
reason to doubt that the same is the case. Nor again, in the 
border-land betweeen science proper and its applications, have I 
to record anything so important as the Paris Electrical Exhibition. 
That Exhibition, however, bore legitimate fruit in the Electric 
Lighting Exhibition at the Crystal Palace, and in the technical 
experiments lately carried out on a large scale at Munich. 
Perhaps the most prominent feature of the Crystal Palace Show 
was the incandescent light. At Paris that mode of illumination 
appeared to be little more than a possibility, in London it had 
beeome an accomplished fact. The importance attaching to this 
advance in electric lighting may be measured both by the rapid 
extension of its use, and also by the fact that not a few of our 
leading minds consider that the incandescent lamp is the lamp 
of the future, not merely for domestic, but even for many other 
public purposes. 
But in another way the present year has witnessed the most 
important step which could have been taken for the promotion of 
electric lighting in this country. The Legislature has passed the 
Electric Lighting Bill, and, so far as legislation can effect the 
object, it has brought electricity to our doors. Up to this time 
installations of greater or less magnitude had sprung up sporadi- 
cally in many parts of country, in railway stations, manufacturing 
works, and occasionally in private houses. But, compared with 
the lighting of a whole town, or even of separate districts of a 
large city, even the most important of these must be confessed 
still to partake of the nature of experiments ; experiments, it is 
true, on a large scale, and, as I believe, conclusive as to the 
ultimate issue. Indeed,+by multiplication of machines it is 
certainly, even now, possible to increase the lighting power to 
any required extent ; but this can hardly be regarded as the final 
form of solution of the problem, inasmucli as such a method 
would be as uneconomical as it would be to use a number of small 
steam-engines instead of a large one. And when we consider 
that at the time of the passing of the Act in question, there was 
but one machine actually constructed which was capable of 
illuminating even one thousand incandescent lamps (I mean that 
of Edison), we cannot but feel that much remained to be done 
before the requirements of the public could be fully met. Ido 
not mean thereby to imply that the Act was passed at all too 
soon; on the contrary, it has already given just that impetus 
which was necessary for producing installations on a larger scale. 
In illustration of this, I cannot help mentioning, as the first fruit 
of the impetus, a remarkable machine, by our countryman Mr. 
J. E. H. Gordon, which appears capable of feeding from five 
to six thousand lamps. 
But beside the impulse above described, the Bill will have a 
scientific influence perhaps not contemplated by its original pro- 
moters. Under this Act, for the first time in the history of the 
world, energy will come under the grasp of the law, will become 
the subject of commercial contracts, and be bought and sold as 
a commodity of everyday use. It is, in fact, far from improbable 
that the public supply of electricity will be reckoned and charged 
for in terms of energy itself. But whether this be literally the 
case or not, a measurement of energy must lie at the root of 
every scale of charge. 
And, further, since the Act allows no restriction to be placed 
upon the use of the electricity so supplied, it follows that it may 
be used, and undoubtedly will be used, at the pleasure and con- 
venience of the customer, either for lighting, or for heating, or 
for mechanical, or for chemical purposes. ‘This being so, it is 
clear that the public must by this process become, practically at 
least, familiar with the various modes of the transformation of 
force ; and the Act in question might, from this point of view, 
have been entitled An Act for the better Appreciation of the 
Transformation of Force. 
While offering to the public this new commodity, electricians 
may, in one respect, especially congratulate themselves, namely, 
that their article is incapable of adulteration. An electric current 
of a given strength and given electro-motive force is perfectly 
defined, and is identically the same whether it comes from a 
Siemens or a Gramme, from a magneto- or from a dynamo- 
machine, or as suggested by an eminent counsel before the Select 
Committee of the House of Commons, from one machine 
painted red or from another painted blue 
It has been said, and perhaps with truth, that the electric 
light will be the light of the rich rather than that of the poor. 
But in more ways than one electricity may now become the poor 
man’s friend. The advantages in avoidance of heat and of 
vitiated atmosphere in workshops and factories have often been ! 
pointed out, and may ultimately become an important factor in 
the physical growth and prosperity of our population. But 
besides this, when electricity is literally brought to our doors, it 
will become possible, by converting it into motive power of 
limited extent, to revive some of the small industries which during 
the last half century have been crushed by the great manufac- 
turing establishments of the country. There are operations 
which are capable of being carried out by the wives and families 
of workmen; there are works of small extent which can be 
performed more advantageously in a small establishment than in 
a large one, and it can hardly fail to be a gain to the community 
if this new departure should give fresh opportunities for the 
development of our industry in these directions. 
The Copley Medal his been awarded to Prof, Arthur Cayley, 
F.R.S., for his numerous profound and comprehensive researches 
in Pure Mathematics. 
One Royal Medal has been awarded to Prof. William Henry 
Flower, F.R.S. During the last thirty years Prof. Flower has 
been actively engaged in extending our knowledge of Com- 
parative Anatomy and Zoology in general and of the Mammalia 
in particular. 
His Memoirs on the Brain and Dentition of the Marsupialia 
published in the PAz/. Trans. for 1865 and 1867, established 
several very important points in morphology, and finally disposed 
of sundry long-accepted errors. 
His paper ‘*On the Value of the Characters of the Base of 
the Cranium in the Carnivora” (1869), and numerous memoirs 
on the Cetacea, are hardly less valuable additions to zoological 
literature. 
Prof. Flower has been for more than twenty years Curator of 
the Museum of the Royai College of Surgeons, and it is very 
largely due to his incessant and well-directed labours that the 
museun at present contains the most complete, the best ordered, 
and the most accessible collection of materials for the study of 
vertebrate structure extant. 
The publication of the first volume of the new Osteological 
Catalogue in 1879, affords an opportunity for the recognition of 
Prof. Flower’s services in this direction. It contains carefully 
verified measurements of between 1300 and 1400 human skulls, 
and renders accessible to every anthropologist a rich mine of 
craniological d+ta. 
The other Royal Medal has been awarded to Lord Rayleigh, 
M.A., F.R.S. 
The researches of Lord Rayleigh have been numerous, and 
extend over many different subjects; and they are all charac- 
terised by a rare combination of experimental skill with mathe- 
matical attainments of the highest order. 
One class of investigations to which Lord Rayleigh has paid 
much attention is that of vibrations, both of gases and of elastic 
sol ds. The results of most of these researches are now em- 
bodied in Lord Rayleigh’s important work on the ‘‘ Theory of 
Sound,” a work which not only presents the labours of others 
up to the time of writing in a digested and accessible form, but 
is full of original matter. 
The subject of vibration naturally leads on to a mention of 
other hydro-dynamical researches. Lord Rayleigh has investi- 
gated the motion of waves of finite height, and in particular has 
shown that the ‘‘great solitary wave” of our late Fellow, Mr. 
Scott Russell, has a determinate character ; and he has investi- 
gated the circumstances of its motion to an order of approxima- 
tion sufficient to apply to waves of considerable height. 
Lord Rayleigh has examined more fully than had previously 
been done the theory of diffraction gratings, and the effects of 
irregularities ; and also investigated the defining power of opti- 
cal combinations, and its limitation by diffraction and spherical 
aberration. 
He has lately been engaged in the elaborate re-determination 
of the B.A. unit of electrical resistance. 
The Rumford Medal has been awarded to Capt. W. de W. 
Abney, R.E., F.R.S. Capt. Abney has contributed largely to 
the advancement of the theory and practice of photography by 
numerous investigations. In the Bakerian Lecture for 1880 he 
has given an account of a method by which photography can he 
extended to the invisible region below A, which had been 
hitherto but very imperfectly examined by means of the thermo- 
ile. 
: Making use of plates prepared with silver bromide in a par- 
ticular molecular condition, Capt. Abney, by means of a diffrac- 
tion grating containing 17,600 lines to the inch, constructed a 
detailed map of the intra-red region of the solar spectrum ex- 
tending from A down to A 10,650 (Plate XXXI. Phil, Trans., 
