ADDRESS OF HON. S. S. COX« 107 



man? Yes; but its primary cause of motion is the force which 

 elevated it in vapor under the radiance of the sunbeam. Combus- 

 tion, too, is but the passage from an unstable into a stable combina- 

 tion of the carbon and hydrogen of the fuel, with oxygen of the 

 atmosphere. These he resolves into the force which causes the 

 separation of these elements from their previous combination in the 

 state of carbonic acid, to the radiant heat of the sunbeam ! What 

 is the mechanical power exerted by animals? It is but the passage 

 of organized matter taken into the stomach, from an unstable to a 

 stable equilibrium. It is the combustion of food. Animal power, 

 like the combustion of fuel, is potential again in the sunbeam! 

 Arriving thus at the very threshold of the mystery of vitality, he 

 asks: What is its office? Only that of the engineer who directs the 

 power of the engine. 



But these exploits and associations, incentives and accomplish- 

 ments, do not furnish the substantial pediment of Henry's fame. 

 Did he spend his vacation as Princeton professor in blowing soap- 

 bubbles for a fortnight? It was not the bubble reputation which he 

 sought. He was seeking something less fragile and prismatic; he 

 was then investigating the law of liquid films and molecular energy. 

 What is he doing with the thermal telescope, so exquisitely con- 

 structed, referred to this evening by Professor Rogers, with such 

 loving and delicate analysis, and so recently used in our country 

 under the auspices of Edison? Finding out not merely that the 

 moon has no heat, but measuring the heat* of some animate object 

 in a distant field. He is making the type of a mechanism beyond 

 all expression refined. 



In all these branches he wa^ a central light. Edmund Spenser 

 has been called the poets' poet. Joseph Henry may be called the 

 savant of the physicists. He loved to show what science was in its 

 essence, lifting in living harmony all speculations and experiments 

 into a higher plane; Scientia scientiarum ! For half a century he 



