550 



NA TURE 



[September 26, 1907 



NEW LABORATORIES AT QUEEN'S 

 COLLEGE. BELFAST. 



ON Friday last, September 20, the buildiiifjfs 

 recently erected to provide much-needed addi- 

 tional accommodation for the scientific departments 

 of Queen's College, Belfast, were formally opened. 

 These buildings include the Donald Currie laboratory 

 and lecture-room for chemistry, the Musgrave 

 laboratories for pathology and bacteriology, the Jaff6 

 ■laboratory for physiology, the Harland laboratories 

 of physics and engineering, and rooms for the de- 

 partments of biology, pharmacology, and surgery. 



Lord Kelvin had promised to visit the city of' his 

 birth and early life in order to perform the opening 

 ceremony. Unfortunately, a few days before the date 

 fixed, the sudden and serious illness of Lady Kelvin 

 made it impossible for him to fulfil his engagement. 

 Lord Kelvin sent to Belfast the text of the address 

 \vhich he had prepared for the occasion, and this was 

 read to the meeting by his nephew, Mr. James Thom- 

 son, whose father. Prof. James Thomson, formerly 

 occupied the chair of engineering in the college. 

 The buildings were declared open by Sir Otto Jaff6, 

 chairman of the committee in charge of the " Better 

 ISquipment Fund," and a prominent benefactor of the 

 college. The meeting was afterwards addressed by 

 Sir Christopher Nixon, vice-chancellor of the Royal 

 "UnrversitT,' of Ireland, and bv Prof. Letts. 



In the beginning of his address Lord Kelvin traced 

 the development of university education in Belfast 

 from the foundation, about 1815, of the " Academical 

 Institution," of which the collegiate part was after- 

 wards merged in the Queen's College. He expressed 

 the hope that the college would soon receive the full 

 status of an independent university. After enumerat- 

 ing the laboratories to be opened on that day, the 

 Jiddress proceeded as follows : — 



Now that you have them open and ready for use, what 

 :are you going to do with them? Your chiefs in the 

 ■different departments, professors, assistant professors, 

 assistant workers, and students, will, I am sure, soon give 

 very good and useful answers to that question. None of 

 your chiefs will be likely to follow the example of a good 

 old university professor of a bygone age in the sister island, 

 who was the happy official possessor of many very fine and 

 •costly instruments, in which he took great pride. He 

 devoted himself whole-heartedly to keeping them in order. 



Your seven laboratories extend over the whole field of 

 lifeless matter and of matter associated with life. We may 

 be sure that in none of them will there be any lack of 

 useful occupation. Personally, I need hardly say, I envy 

 most the workers in the laboratories of physics, chemistry, 

 and engineering. 



At the present stage of the era which commenced with 

 Henri Becquerel's discovery of radio-activity in salts of 

 uranium and in metallic uranium, the very thought of 

 physics and chemistry, a now united science, compels us 

 to think of radium, in which Madame Curie discovered the 

 clement of Becquerel's wonderful radiation. I hope the 

 physical and chemical laboratories of Queen's College, Bel- 

 fast, will try to find if the radium clement does occasionally 

 explode into fragments. If they find that it does, the 

 laboratories will, I trust, hold an official conference with 

 the professors of Greek and logic, and come to a con- 

 clusion whether or not it is a convenient fiction to call the 

 radium element an atom. It may remain quite convenient 

 to continue calling radium an 'element. Indeed, I well 

 remember a time in Belfast when we used to call earth, 

 air, fire, and water "the four elements." 



Whatever may betide, I hope the physical and chemical 

 laboratories of Queen's College will " be full of radio- 

 activity until we have more intimate knowledge of radium 

 ' i"i,^'^ have of iron, with its magnetic quality. 

 ,„J."'''^'*^ '"""y happy recollections of Queen's College in the 

 tifties and 'sixties, when my brother was professor of 

 'engmeerrng there. What would he not have given for the 



admirable and useful engineering laboratory of which 

 Queen's College takes possession to-day? 



I have somewhat later recollections of Queen's College, 

 full of personal and scientific interest, when Thomas 

 .Andrews was making his immortal discoveries in it regard- 

 ing the continuity of the gaseous and liquid stales, now 

 celebrated throughout the scientific world. I well remem- 

 ber, too, his showing me, on a promisingly practical scale 

 of magnitude, the electrical transmission of power through 

 a pair of copper wires, from one Gramme dynamo driven 

 by hand to another taking the work from it. No doubt 

 Andrews showed this to his students at a time when, by 

 most engineers and scientific men, engineering applications 

 of electromagnctism were looked on as chimerical fancies 

 of ingenious, non-practical professors or other weak 

 persons. Who can say whether the seed thus sown, about 

 1870, or 1871 or 1872, through university action in the 

 north of Ireland, may not have germinated in the Portrush 

 electric railway, which has given to Ireland the first historic 

 title to the utilisation of water-power by electric trans- 

 mission to many miles, instead of to a few yards, as shown 

 to the students of Queen's College in Andrews's lecture- 

 room ? 



NO. 1978, VOL. 76] 



PROF. L. F. VERNON-HARCOURT. 

 T"" HE death of Prof. Vernon-Harcourt, following so 

 -•■ soon after that of Sir Benjamin Baker, not only 

 deprives the civil engineering profession of another 

 illustrious member, but leaves experimental science 

 the poorer for the loss of one of her most devoted 

 sons. The branch of civil engineering work with 

 which Prof. ^"l■rnon-Harcourt was inost closely asso- 

 ciated was that concerned in the maintenance and con- 

 struction of waterways. Harbours, docks, rivers, 

 canals — all and everything, in fact, which appertains 

 to the provision and improvement of routes and ter- 

 mini for water-borne traffic is included under this 

 head. In this special domain Prof. Vernon-Harcourt 

 was an acknowledged authority, and the treatises 

 thereon which caine from his pen, and the opinions 

 which he expressed, invariably carried with them that 

 conviction which is the rightful due of sound know- 

 ledge and ripe experience. 



He came of distinguished ancestry. The son of an 

 admiral, the grandson of an archbishop, he could 

 scarcely fail to leave his mark in any profession he 

 might take up. A brilliant career at Oxford (he 

 graduated in i86i with a first class in mathematics, 

 and the following year in natural science) was fol- 

 lowed by three years of steady, persevering study 

 in the practice of civil engineering under the late Sir 

 John Hawkshaw. Then came ten years of responsible 

 executive work, first at the South-\^'est India Dock, 

 then on Alderney Breakwater, on Rosslare Harbour, 

 and the railway to Wexford. Finally, in 1878, he 

 established himself as a consultant, with offices in 

 Westminster, and four years later he was appointed 

 professor of civil engineering at University College, 

 London. His active connection with I'niversity Col- 

 lege was maintained practically up to the time of his 

 death. 



Prof. Vernon-Harcourt will perhaps be best remem- 

 bered by his writings, which have won for their author 

 a deserved and unquestioned reputation. In 1882 

 appeared " Rivers and Canals " (second edition, 

 iSq6), followed in 1S85 by " Harbours and Docks," 

 in 1891 by " .Xchievements in Engineering," and in 

 iqo2 by " Civil Engineering as applied to Construc- 

 tion." All these works are characterised by lucidity 

 of style and soundness of thought, and they are to be 

 found to-day on the bookshelves of most practising 

 engineers. In addition thereto. Prof. ^'ernon-Har- 

 court contributed to the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," 

 and wrote copiously for various learned societies — the 

 Institution of Civil Engineers, the Royal Society, the 



