TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 5 



day, and disappears except to the antiquary. But in science nothing of value can 

 ever be lost ; it is certain to become a stepping-stone on the way to further truth. 

 Still, when our stepping-stones are laid, we should not wait till others employ 

 them. *' Gentlemen of the Guard be kind enough to fire first " is a courtesy 

 entirely out of date ; with the weapons of the present day it woidd be simply 

 suicide. 



There is another point which should not be omitted in an address like this. For 

 obvious reasons I must speak of the general question only, not venturing on ex- 

 amples, though I coidd give many telling ones. Even among our greatest men of 

 science in this country there is comparatively little knowledge of what has been 

 already achieved, except of course in the one or more special departments culti- 

 vated by each individual. There can be little doubt that one cause at least of this 

 is to be sought in the extremely meagre interest which our statesmen, as a rule, 

 take in scientific progress. While abroad we find half a dozen professore teaching 

 parts of the same subject in one University (each having therefore reasonable leisure), 

 with u.s one man has to do the whole, and to endeavour as he best can to make some- 

 thing out of his very few spare moments. Along with this, and in great part due 

 to it, there is often found a proneness to believe that what seems evident to the 

 thinker cannot but have been long known to others. Thus the credit of many 

 valuable discoveries is lost to Britain because her pliilosophers, having no time to 

 spare, do not know that they are discoveries. The scientific men of other nations 

 are, as a rule, better informed [certainly far better encouraged and less over- worked], 

 and perhaps likewise are not so much given to self-depreciation. Until something 

 resembling the 'Fortschritte der Physik,' but in an improved form, and published 

 at smaller intervals and with much less delay, is established in this country, there 

 is little hope of improvement in this respect. Why should science be imperfectly 

 summarized in little haphazard scraps here and there, when mere property has its 

 elaborate series of Money-articles and exact Broker's Share-lists ? Such a work 

 would be very easy of accomplishment : we have only to begin boldly ; we do 

 not need to go back, for in every year good work is being done at almost every part 

 of the boundary between, as it were, the cultivated land and the still unpenetrated 

 forest — enough at all events to show with all necessary accuracy whereaoouts that 

 boundary Ues. 



There is no need of entering here on the question of Conservation of Energy ; 

 it is thoroughly accepted by scientific men, and has revolutionized the greater part 

 of Physics. The facts as to its history also are generally agreed upon, but differ- 

 ences of a formidable kind exist as to the deductions to be drawn from them. 

 These are matters, however, which will be more easily disposed of thirty years 

 hence than now. The Transformation of Energy is also generally accepted, and, 

 in fact, under various unsatisfactoiy names was almost popularly known before the 

 Conservation of Energy was known in its entirety to more than a very few. But 

 the Dissipation of Energy is by no means well known, and many of the results of 

 its legitimate application have been received with doubt, sometimes even with 

 attempted ridicule. Yet it appears to be at the present moment by far the most 

 promising and fertile portion ot Natural Philosophy, having obvious applications 

 of which as yet only a small percentage appear to have been made. Some, indeed, 

 were made before the enunciation of the Principle, and have since been recognized 

 as instances of it. Of such we have good examples in Fourier's great work on 

 Heat-conduction, in the optical theorem that an image can never be brighter than 

 the object, in Gauss's mode of investigating electrical distribution, and m some of 

 Thomson's theorems as to the energy of an electromagnetic field. But its dis- 

 coverer has, so far as I know, as yet confined himself in its explicit application to 

 questions of Heat-conduction and Restoration of Energy, Geological Time, the 

 Earth's Rotation, and such like. Unfortunately his long-expected Rede Lecture 

 has not yet been pubHshed, and its contents (save to those who were fortunate 

 enough to hear it) are still almost entirely unknown. 



But there can be little question that the Principle contains implicitly the whole 

 theory of Thenno-electricity, of Chemical Combination, of Allotropy, of Fluo- 

 rescence, &c., and perhaps even of matters of a higher order than common physics 

 and chemistry. In Astronomy it leads us to the grand question of the age, or 



