426 



NA TURE 



[September 3, 1908 



toiJLthi r, who have all • passed away within a space of 

 three months, are such representative types of scientific 

 worl-iers, complementary and supplementary, that a similar 

 combination is not likely to occur again. All three in- 

 dispensable, yet no two alike, except in their enthusiasm 

 for the sciences for the advancement of which Section A 

 exists. 



To these I miglit indeed add another type, the private 

 contributor to the physical exploration of the visible 

 universe, of which Ireland furnishes so many noble 

 examples ; and in that connection let me give expression 

 to the sense of grievous loss, to this Association and to 

 Science, occasioned by the premature death of W. E. 

 Wilson, of Daramona, a splendid example of that type. 



In the division of the work of advancing the sciences 

 of mathematics and physics and their application to the 

 service of mankind, I am reminded of Dryden's somewhat 

 lopsided comparison of the relative influence of music and 

 song in his Ode to St. Cecilia's Day. If I may be 

 pardoned for comparing small things with great, the power 

 of Timotheus' music over Alexander's moods was hardly 

 less complete than Kelvin's power to touch every depart- 

 ment of the working world with his genius. But I may 

 remind you that, after a prolonged description of the 

 tremendous influence of Timotheus upon the victorious 

 hero, the poet deals in one stanza with his nominal 

 subject : — 



" .\l last divine Cecilia came, 

 Inventress of the vocal frame \ 

 The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred ^tore, 

 Enlarged the former narrow bounds 



With nature's mother-wit, and arts unknown before. 



Let old Timotheus yield the prize. 



Or both divide the crown ; 

 He raised a mortal to the skies, 



She drew an angel down." 



I doubt if any of my hearers who knew Strachey by sight 

 would recognise in him the scientific reincarnation of St. 

 Cecilia, but it is none the less true that he was pre- 

 eminent among men in inventing the means of drawing 

 angels down and using their service for the attuning of 

 common life to a scientific standard. It may be equally 

 hard for those who knew him to look upon Eliot as a vocal 

 frame, for of all his physical capacities his voice was the 

 least impressive ; and yet it is not untrue to say that he 

 was conspicuously a medium by which the celestial 

 harmonies of the physical sciences were brought into touch 

 with the practical life of India through his work, which 

 is represented by a considerable number of the twenty 

 volumes of Memoirs of the Indian Meteorological Service. 



I do not indulge in this poetic extravagance without 

 some underlying reason. Speaking for the physics of the 

 atmosphere, there is a real distinction between these three 

 sides of scientific work. To some is given the power of 

 the mathematician or the physicist to raise the mortal to 

 the skies, to solve some problem which, if not in itself 

 a meteorological one, still has a bearing, sooner or later 

 to be discovered and developed, upon the working of atmo- 

 spheric phenomena. It is easy enough to cite illustrious 

 examples : among notable instances there recur to my mind 

 Rayleigh's work on the colour of the sky and Pernter's 

 meteorological optics ; papers by Ferrel and others on the 

 general circulation of the atmosphere ; Kelvin and Ray- 

 leigh on the elastic oscillations of the atmosphere ; the 

 papers by Hagen, Helmholtz, Oberbeck, Margules, Hertz, 

 and Von Bezold on the dynamics and therinodynamics of 

 the atmosphere, collected and translated by Cleveland Abbe ; 

 the w-ork on atmospheric absorption by Langley and the 

 theoretical papers on radiation by Poynting ; those on con- 

 densation nuclei by Aitken and Wilson, and the recent 

 work on atmospheric electricity, including the remarkable 

 paper by Wilson on the quiet transference of electricity 

 from the air to the ground. 



But these things are not of themselves applied to the 

 meteorology of everyday life. It is, in a way, a separate 

 sense, given to few, to realise the possibilities that may 

 result from the solution of new theoretical problems, from 

 the invention of new methods — to grasp, in fact, the idea 

 of bringing the angels down. And, in order that the 

 regular workers in such matters may be in a position 



XO. 2027, VOL. 78] 



constantly to reap the advantages which men of genius 

 provide, the vocal frame must have its permanent embodi- ^m 

 ment. For the advancement of science in this sense we ^H 

 require all three — the professor with academic freedom ■ 

 to illuminate with his genius any phenomenon which he 

 may be pleased to investigate, the administrator, face to 

 face with the practical problems in which science can 

 help, and the living voice which can tune itself in harmony 

 with the advances of science and in sympathy with the 

 needs of the people whom it serves. 



The true relations of these matters are not always 

 apparent. Eliot, bringing to the work of tlie Indian 

 Meteorological Oflice a mind trained in the mathematical 

 school of which Kelvin was a most conspicuous exponent, 

 achieved a remarkable success, with which perhaps my 

 hearers are not familiar. 



In this country there is a widespread idea that meteor- 

 ology achieves its object if by its means the daily papers 

 can give such trustworthy advice as will enable a cautious 

 man to decide whether to take out his walliing-stick or 

 his umbrella. Some of us are accustomed to look upon 

 India as a place of unusual scientific enlightenment, where 

 governments have a worthy appreciation of the claims of 

 science for recognition and support. But Eliot was never 

 tired of telling me that it was the administration of India, 

 and not the advancement of science, that the Indian 

 administrators had in view ; and among his achievements 

 the one of which he was most proud was that the conduct 

 of his ofhce upon scientific lines during his tenure had so 

 commended itself to the administrators that his successor 

 was to be allowed three assistants, with special scientific 

 training, in order that the State might have the benefit 

 of their knowledge. 



It is, of course, easy to suggest in explanation of this 

 success that the Department of Public Works of India 

 cannot afford to be unmindful of the distribution of rain- 

 fall, and that there is an obvious connection between Indian 

 finances and Indian droughts; but it is a new fact in 

 British history that the application of scientific considera- 

 tions to the phenomena of rainfall is of such direct prac- 

 tical importance that meteorological information is a 

 matter of consequence to all Government officials, and that 

 meteorological prospects are a factor of finance. Imagine 

 his Majesty's Chancellor of the Exchequer calling at 

 63 Victoria Street to make inquiries with a view to 

 framing his next Budget, or taking his prospects of a 

 realised surplus from the Daily Weather Report. Yet in 

 India meteorology is to such an extent a public servant 

 that such proceedings would not excite remark. 



To have placed a scientific service on such a footing is, 

 indeed, a notable success. Again, I rely upon Eliot when 

 I say that that success is only to be achieved by being 

 constantly on the watch to render service wherever service 

 can be rendered. There is a difference between tliis attitude 

 and that which has for its object the contribution of an 

 effective paper to a scientific publication ; in other words, 

 it must be frankly recognised that the business of the 

 scientific departments of government is not to raise an 

 occasional mortal to the skies, but to draw down as many 

 angels as are within reach. I was much surprised, when 

 Eliot wished to develop a large scheme for meteorological 

 work on a wider scale, that he made his appeal to the 

 British Association as Chairman of the Sub-section for 

 Cosmical Physics at Cambridge, and thereby to the Govern- 

 ments of this country and the Colonies. He felt that he 

 could only urge the Indian Government to join, and he 

 did so successfully, so far as India would be directly 

 benefited thereby, however important the results might be 

 from a purely scientific point of view. Strange as it may 

 appear to some, it was to this country that he looked 

 for assistance, on the plea of the increase of knowledge 

 for its own sake, or for the sake of mankind at large. 



I am disposed, therefore, to carry your thoughts a little 

 further, and rely on your patience while I consider another 

 aspect for the process of drawing down the angels from 

 the mathematical and physical sky, a process which is 

 sufficiently indicative of the functions of a State scientific 

 department. Viewing the world at large, and not merely 

 that part of it with which we are ourselves immediately 

 concerned, such departments deal with celestial phvsics in 

 astronomy, with the physics of the air in meteorology and 



