28 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CAXADIAN' INSTITUTE. 



-dburage and distinction, and high in the friendship and confidence of 

 Sir Guy Carlton. On the reduction of his regiment, subsequent to 

 the close of the war, he went to Vienna to serve with the Austrians 

 against the Turks. Bat the expected hostilities not ttijiing place he 

 entered the service of the Elector of Bavaria as Colonel of Cavalry and 

 Aide-de-camp General. He devoted himself to physical researches 

 and to the inauguration of reforms of all kinds, economical, political 

 and military. Honours were showered upon him. He became 

 Lieutenant-General of the Bavarian armies, a Count of the Holy 

 Roman Empire, and was decorated with the order of the White 

 Eagle. But, with all his manifold employments, he found time to 

 pursue his scientific investigations, and was made a member of the 

 Academy of Sciences of Berlin and of Bavaria. Returning for a 

 while to England he read before the Royal Society in 1798 his 

 remarkable paper " on the source of the heat which is generated 

 during friction." While superintending the boring of cannon in the 

 arsenal at Munich he was struck by the heat produced, and led to 

 construct a special boring apparatus, by means of which he succeeded 

 in making water boil. The paper is a description of these experi- 

 ments, and contains the pregnant idea, expressly stated, that heat 

 produced in this way could not possibly be a material substance — 

 could not, indeed, be readily conceived as anything other than motion. 

 Anxious to introduce into England those reforms with reference to 

 the condition of the poor which he had endeavoured to inaugurate 

 abroad, he set on foot, among other schemes, an institution " for the 

 diffusion of scientific knowledge, and for the teaching of the applica- 

 tion of science to the useful purposes of life." The outcome of this 

 was the Royal Institution. Rumford was greatly interested in the 

 economical applications of fuel. He had done a great deal in this 

 direction in the kitchens of several public institutions in several 

 parts of Europe ; and one of his leading ideas with reference to the 

 new institution was the exhibition of models of fire-places, stoves, 

 boilers, as well as houses, bridges, spinning wheels, and such other 

 machinery as the managers should deem worthy of public notice. 

 In addition to this, a lecture-room was to be fitted for philosophical 

 lectures and experiments, and a laboratory established and furnished 

 with all the necessary apparatus for chemical and physical investi- 

 gation. The instituion began its life with the present century, aiid 

 tlie chair of Chemistry was soon filled by a young Cornish chemist. 



