October 3, 1907] 



NATURE 



575 



organisation. Expressed briefly, brain-power was 

 described as the chief factor upon which commer- 

 cial progress must depend. Subjoined is a sum- 

 mary of the parts of the speech concerned with this 

 subject : — 



We live in a time when we shall fall behind in the race if 

 we do not possess as a nation the gift of organisation. 

 Capital has become the instrument in the hands of the 

 directing brain ; and the directing brain for huge concerns of 

 to-day is only big enough if it can embrace in its survey 

 the whole of the competing civilisation. Germany, France, 

 the United States, and other countries are pressing us hard, 

 and it is only by the possession of ideas, by the willingness 

 to work as our forefathers never worlscd, with the same 

 concentration, we can hope to hold our own in the race. 

 .■\t the bottom of great ideas comes great capacity to 

 organise if they are to succeed ; and with great capacity 

 to organise great capacity to think. It is the thinker, 

 the man of ideas, who can translate thought into action, 

 that wins the race of to-day — a race far stiffer, far harder, 

 far nobler, than the easy race of our forefathers. Our 

 universities are growing ; our tropical schools are starting ; 

 our organisation of commerce is going to be on a larger 

 scale ; and yet it is none too soon, because other nations 

 are doing the very same thing. So it comes that the 

 great lesson which this nation has to learn appears to be 

 this — to recognise that mind dominates matter, that brains 

 lie at the root of things, and that upon their working 

 out and the results whicfi brains have provided no progress 

 can be made without that secondary but emphatically 

 valuable faculty is added — the faculty of organisation. 



The creation of the Committee of Imperial Defence 

 carried scientific principles into the sphere of government, 

 and was the first step toward getting military and naval 

 notions into order. We now have a general staff which 

 is a body, not to exercise command, but to give advice 

 in a thoroughly practical fashion and in a fashion whicli 

 can be enforced. The speculation may be indulged in 

 whether one of the great reforms of government to which 

 we are coming — because we have been driven to it — will 

 not be the creation in an organised fashion of just such 

 a general staff for departments of government, and not 

 merely for the Army. \ concrete instance may be given 

 of the value of scientific advice. In two parts of the 

 dominions of the Crown there are diseases of a terrible 

 character raging at this moment. One is understood, 

 because it has been dealt with by the scientific experts of 

 the Government, but the other is not, because there are 

 no scientific experts to deal with it. The first case is in 

 India, where research work is carried out bv experts whom 

 the Indian Government has organised, and who are out 

 working in the subordinate departments of the Government, 

 exercising no authority, but giving advice and reporting 

 to headquacters. These investigators and advisers have 

 brought the plague in India within compass. Then, to 

 give a second case, in one of the West Indian islands, 

 possibly in more, there flourishes what is called tropical 

 anajmia, which, although not fatal to life in the ordinary 

 sense, reduces the working power of its victims by 30 per 

 cent, or 40 per cent. This is a sheer loss to the State, 

 and yet the disease can be and has been combated in 

 other parts of the world. This disease, which also exists 

 in our mines, where it is known as ankylostomiasis, was 

 recently very familiar in Westphalia, and the German 

 Government, working on general staff principles, dealt 

 with the .scourge on scientific principles from the 

 beginning. The disease exists in our Cornish mines, but 

 we have not extirpated it as thoroughly as the Germans 

 have. 



If people were but aware what can be accomplished 

 and what can be saved to the State, and the extent to 

 which our cominunity can be made more efficient bv deal- 

 ing with these things on a scientific footing, the nation 

 would be wiser and better. This may seem to be the 

 bureaucratic point of view, but when it is founded on 

 science it is the right point of view; and the governments 

 of the future will find more and more work of this kind 

 forced upon them. 



THE REV. DR. JOHN KERR, F.R.S. 



JOHN KERR, the discoverer of the Kerr effect in 

 magneto-optics, was born at Ardrossan, Ayr- 

 shire, December 17, 1824, and received part of his 

 earlv education at a parish school in Sylie. He gradu- 

 ated -M.-A. with honours in 1849 at Glasgow Univer- 

 sitv, where he greatly distinguished himself, cspeci- 

 all'v in mathematics 'and natural philosophy. He 

 completed the usual course in theology at the Free 

 Church College in Glasgow, but, instead of entering 

 on a clerical career, became in 1857 mathematical lec- 

 turer in the Free Church Normal Training College 

 for Teachers in Glasgow, an institution which has 

 recently passed under Uie direct control of the .Scottish 

 Education Department. Here for forty-four years he 

 trained in mathematics and physics thousands of our 

 vouth who afterwards filled important scholastic posi- 

 tions. On his retirement in 1901 his old pupils enter- 

 tained him at a banquet, when Prof. Magnus 

 Maclean in their name presented him with a tea and 

 coffee service, and made a graceful reference to his 

 great work. 



In 1867 Kerr brought out an " Elementary Treatise 

 on Rational Mechanics " (Hamilton, Glasgow), which 

 deserves more than a passing notice. While adher- 

 ing to the usual mode of treatinent at that time, 

 namely, first statics and then dynamics, he intro- 

 duced what was then a novelty in English books, a 

 separate chapter on kinematics as a preliminary to the 

 chapters on kinetics. Numerous examples are ap- 

 pended to the various chapters, and it is doubtful if 

 among the many inore modern treatises of similar 

 standard a better working book for the student exists. 

 Every here and there the physical mind of the 

 author is in evidence, especially in an appendix or 

 " Note," the object of which " is to give a sketch of 

 some of the simpler facts connected with the mani- 

 festations of force in nature." Elasticity, cohesion, 

 capillarity, electricity, magnetism, physical optics, 

 and sound are briefly commented on ; and the con- 

 servation of energy is discussed under that name. 

 The book was written before the formal appearance 

 of Thomson and Tait's " Natural Philosophy," but no 

 doubt under its influence. It is interesting to note 

 that Kerr returns to Newton for the true foundation 

 of dynamics. 



In 1S75 Kerr published his first paper " On a New 

 Relation between Electricity and Light : Dielectric 

 Media Birefringent " {Phil. Mag., vol. I., pp. 337- 

 34S and 446-458). Accepting the Faraday theory of 

 electric strain, he constructed a remarkably simple 

 form of apparatus in which the ends of two terminals 

 in connection with the open secondary circuit of an 

 induction coil were brought to within a quarter of an 

 inch of each other in the lieart of a plate of glass. 

 Nicol prisms were arranged for extinction with their 

 principal axes at angles of 45° with the line of ter- 

 minals. When the induction coil was set in operation 

 light was restored by the birefringent action of the 

 electrified glass. The investigation was soon ex- 

 tended to liquids, such as bisulphide of carbon, benzol, 

 parafiin, &c. By an extremely neat and simple use of 

 a compensator of mechanicalh" strained glass inserted 

 in the path of the polarised ray, he proved that elec- 

 trified glass acted upon transmitted light like a 

 negative uniaxal crystal with its axis parallel to the 

 lines of electric force. Quartz acted like glass, but 

 resin acted like a positive uniaxal, as if it were ex- 

 tended along the lines of force. In later papers, pub- 

 lished at intervals in the Philosophical Magazine 

 between 1879 and 1882, he continued this research 

 with more elaborate apparatus, and extended it to a 

 great many substances, establishing, among other 



NO. 1979, VOL. 76] 



