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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. L. No. 129c; 



tion, and of this we may be assured by a 

 study of its proceedings in conjunction 

 with the history of contemporary progress. 

 Although the British Association can not 

 claim any paramount prerogative in this 

 good work, yet it can certainly claim to 

 provide a free arena for discussion where 

 in the past new theories in science, new 

 propositions for beneficial change, new sug- 

 gestions for casting aside fetters to the 

 advancement in science, art, and econom- 

 ies have first seen the light of publication 

 and discussion. 



1 For more than half a century it has 

 pleaded strongly for the advancement of 

 science and its application to the arts. In 

 the yearly volume for 1855 will be found 

 a report in which it is stated that: 



, The objects for -wliicli the association was es- 

 tablished have been carried out in three ways: 

 First, by requisitioning and printing reports on 

 the present state of different branches of science; 

 secondly, by granting sums of money to small com- 

 mittees or individuals, to enable them to carry on 

 new researches; and thirdly, by recommending 

 the government to undertake expeditions of dis- 

 covery, or to make grants of money for certain 

 and national purposes, which were beyond the 

 means of the association. 



As a matter of fact it has, since its com- 

 mencement, paid out of its own funds up- 

 wards of £80,000 in grants of this kind. 



DEVELOPMENTS PRIOR TO THE WAE 



It is twenty-nine years since an engineer. 

 Sir Frederick Bramwell, occupied this 

 chair and -discoursed so charmingly on the 

 great importance of the next-to-nothing, 

 the importance of looking after little 

 things which, in engineering, as in other 

 walks of life, are often too lightly con- 

 sidered. 



The advances in engineering during the 

 last twenty years are too many and com- 

 plex to allow of their description, however 

 short, being included in one address, and, 



following the example of some of my pre- 

 decessors in this chair, I shall refer only to 

 some of the most important features of 

 this wide subject. I feel that I can not do 

 better than begin by quoting from a speech 

 made recently by Lord Inchcape, when 

 speaking on the question of the national- 

 ization of coal : " It is no exaggeration to 

 say that coal has been the maker of 

 modern Britain, and that those who dis- 

 covered and developed the methods of 

 working it have done more to determine 

 the bent of British activities and the form 

 of British society than all the Parliaments 

 of the past hundred and twenty years." 



James Watt. — No excuse is necessary 

 for entering upon this theme, because this 

 year marks the hundredth anniversary of 

 the death of James "Watt, and in reviewing 

 the past it appears that England has 

 gained her present proud position hy her 

 early enterprise and by the success of the 

 Watt steam-engine which enabled her to 

 become the first country to develop her 

 resources in coal, and led to the establish- 

 ment of her great manufactures and her 

 immense mercantile marine. 



The laws of steam which James Watt 

 discovered are simply these: That the 

 latent heat is nearly constant for different 

 pressures within the ranges used in steam- 

 engines, and that, consequently, the greater 

 the steam pressure and the greater the 

 range of expansion, the greater will be the 

 work obtained from a given amount of 

 steam. Secondly, as may now seem to us 

 obvious, that steam from its expansive 

 force will rush into a vacuum. Having re- 

 gard to the state of knowledge at the time, 

 his conclusions appear to have been the 

 result of close and patient reasoning by a 

 mind endowed with extraordinary powers 

 of insight into physical questions, and with 

 the faculty of drawing sound practical con- 

 clusions from numerous experiments de- 



