510 REPORT— 1902. 



thoughtful and philosophic spirit in which the whole is presented. It \Vas, how^ 

 ever, his experimental researches which most excited attention, more particularly 

 those on the action on Light of a strong electro-magnetic field and the fine ex- 

 periments in which he extended heyond any observations hitherto made the 

 analysis of the Zeeman effect. 



Of two others I have yet to speak, and these Avere feittphatically representatives 

 of this city and of the College in whose Halls we are meeting to-day — Thomas 

 Andrews and James Thomson. It would be difficult to describe adequately all 

 the phases of so manifold an activity as that of Dr. Andrews. As one long 

 associated with him as a colleague I would bear testimony to one side of his lifei- 

 worli — the potent influence he exercised in this College in its earlier years as a 

 sliilful pilot guiding the ship till it Avas well out of port. His high ideal of the 

 function it should discharge in the education of the country and the practical 

 zeal and ability which he ever brought to bear on the administration of our 

 affairs contributed in no small measure to place the College in the assured position 

 it occupies to-day. 



On bis great physical and chemical investigations it is happily the less neces- 

 sary for me to touch, as they have been so fully brought before you by our Presi- 

 dent in his opening Address ; and as regards the most important of these researches,, 

 those on the continuity of the Liquid and Gaseous states, no one assuredly could 

 have more fitly expounded them than one who has himself pressed forward with 

 such splended success in the paths which Andrews opened up. 



I have always considered that Andrews, through tbe long course of these later 

 ^researches, was most fortunate in having near at hand such a friend as James- 

 Thomson; not that he was a collaborator — for Andrews did all this work unaided 

 — but that Thomson gave him throughout that best of all encouragement which 

 •consists in enlightened appreciation of the importance of the results he was- 

 obtaining and of their inner meaninoj and significance. 



Of Thomson himself what shall I say ? Of all the scientific men I have come' 

 across he perhaps most fulfilled the idea of a philosopher, his ever-working brain 

 ever seeking out causes, ever pondering on tlie why and the wherefore of the 

 unexplained. 



One of his earliest investigations is perhaps the best known, that in which,, 

 basing his reasoning on Caniot's principle, he demonstrates the effect of pressure- 

 in lowering the freezing-point of water, and in which he gave at the same time a 

 numerical estimate of this effect. 



This discovery was of great practical import, for, small as the effect was, it 

 enabled him to explain fully the rationale of the plasticity of ice. 



Forbes had already shown that the motion of glaciers depended upon a plastic 

 or viscous quality in the ice. It remained for Thomson, by the aid of his newly 

 discovered principle, to go a step further and account for this plasticity. 



It is interesting to note that the questions wliich led to some of his most 

 valuable investigations seem to have been started by the filial task he took upon 

 himself of re-editing his father's educational text-books. It was, for example, the 

 revision of a chapter in his father's Geography which I believe led him to examine- 

 more thoroughly into Hadley's theory of the Trade wind.i, and to make the following 

 important addition to that theory. He showed that while in the tropical latitudes^ 

 say of our northern hemisphere, two currents would satisfy all the conditions, 

 i.e., the Trade wind blowing from N.K. to S.W. in the Tower regions of the- 

 atmosphere, and the return current in the upper regions, on the other hand that 

 in the temperate latitudes there must be three currents at different elevations ; 

 that the uppermost and the lowest of these have a movement towards the pole,, 

 but in the middle regions of the atmosphere between these there must be a large 

 return current from the Pole, and that the prevailing motions of all three currents 

 "would be from west to east. 



Thomson was particularly successful in his treatment of this and other 

 questions of fluid motion. lie was not familiar with the technique of the higher 

 mathematics, and on this very account was not tempted, as so many mathematical 

 experts are, to assume impossible conditions in order to bring the problems within 



