526 REPORT— 1903. 



three meetings have audiences been charmed by his fascinating and brilliant evening 

 lectures, all relating to metals. He was President of the Chemical Section at the 

 Cardiff meeting in 1891, and not only did he perform these duties, but he accepted 

 the more laborious and more thankless task, for which his unfailing courtesy and 

 tact so well fitted him, of acting as our General Secretary for four years. His labours 

 in the important field of research which he tilled were appreciated by numerous 

 technical societies and institutions of which he was an honorary member, or had 

 been president or vice-president. Many branches of the public service had the 

 advantage of his skill and experience, which received the official rewai'd in 1899. 



Dr. Common's skill as a designer and constructor of instruments was well 

 known. His instinct or judgment in producing planes and figured concave 

 mirrors of great dimensions was rare, for this is an art almost unknown in the 

 laboratory. His generosity and his valuable advice have been appreciated by 

 many besides myself. 



Rev. H. W. Watson, Second Wrangler and Smith's Prizeman in 1850, was 

 a Vice-President of the British Association in 1886. Mathematical physicists 

 are familiar with the joint work of himself and Burbury on 'Generalised Co-ordi- 

 nates,' and with his mathematical articles. 



In Otto Hilger, the brother of the late Adam Hilger, who between them 

 brought to this country German thoroughness and French skill in instrument 

 manufacture, we have lost one of our first and most valuable constructors. Noted 

 for the high class of all the optical work turned out by the firm, Otto Hilger was 

 not afraid of attacking the problem of manufacturing the Michelson echelon 

 grating. This little bundle of glass plates requires for its success perfection and 

 precision commensurable only with the genius of the inventor. This Otto Hilger 

 supplied. 



Dean Farrar, a life member of the British Association, whose activity lay in 

 another direction, showed his appreciation of the value of science in education by 

 appointing the first science master at Marlborough when he became headmaster in the 

 year 1870. As 1 was a boy at the school at that time, I can speak of the incredulity 

 with which such an announcement was at first received and of the general feeling 

 that such an action was akin to a joke. I was, however, by no means the only boy 

 who hailed the news with delight. We devoured the feast of chemistry and 

 physics put before us by Rodwell and the books which at once became available. 

 Out of gratitude to the late Dean of Canterbury I recall this episode. 



James Wimshurst, the inventor of the influence machine which has carried 

 his name into every corner of the scientific world, was not a member of this 

 Association, but he fostered and encouraged the scientific spirit in young men who, 

 by good-fortune, came to know him. I do not think I have heard anyone spoken 

 of with such gratitude and appreciation as Wimshurst, by men who in their younger 

 days were allowed the run of his well-equipped workshop. 



James Glaisher, best known as a balloonist in the sixties, has died at the 

 great age of ninety-three. The balloon ascent with Coxwell on September 5, 

 1862, when they attained the altitude of 37,000 feet, will long remain in the 

 popular imagination, not on account simply of the great altitude, but by reason 

 of the sensational account of their having been paralysed with cold, and of their 

 being able to stop the ever-increasing ascent only by the presence of mind of 

 Coxwell, wlio, with his limbs frozen, seized the valve rope with his teeth, and so 

 let out the gas. 



While this event remains in everyone's mind, the more prosaic work of 

 Glaisher in astronomy, meteorology, and photography, when most of us were 

 children, and many yet unborn, led to his being elected president of various 

 learned societies. 



He gave one of the evening lectures of the British Association in 1863, the 

 subject being balloon ascents. 



A. F. Osier, the inventor of the self-recording direction and pressure anemo- 

 meter and rain gauge, whose active meteorological work was carried out in the 

 first half of the last century, when he contributed papers to the British Associa- 

 tion and the Literary and Philosophical Society of Birmingham, has died at the 



