June 23, 1899.] 



SCIENCE. 



883 



the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Cambridge 

 and Professor Laugley, of the Smithsonian In- 

 stitution, made speeches. 



As part of the celebration there was an exhi- 

 bition of historical apparatus, regarding which 

 we take the following from the Loudon Times : 

 Most of it belongs to the Institution's own col- 

 lection, but a considerable number of articles 

 are on loan, some memorials of Davy having 

 been sent by Dr. Humphry Davy Rolleston, 

 his grand-nephew, and some of Faraday by his 

 niece. Miss Jane Barnard, and other members 

 of the Barnard family. The founder. Count 

 Eumford, is represented by some models — a 

 grate, fireplace, chimneys, roaster aud stew- 

 pan, which may be taken as typical of the pur- 

 poses which he conceived the Institution should 

 serve. Of the first professor. Dr. Garnett, 

 nothing seems to remain but his picture, and 

 the objects that belonged to the second, Dr. 

 Thomas Young, are not very numerous or 

 striking. 



Of Sir Humphry Davy, however, the relics 

 are most interesting, for they cari-y the mind 

 back to what are probably his two best-known 

 achievements. In the first place there is a 

 couple of the batteries or galvanic troughs with 

 which he was able to effect the decomposition 

 of the alkalis, and in the second a large collec- 

 tion of the lamps with which he experimented 

 in the effort — finally, of course, successful — to 

 find a form safe for use in dangerous coal mines. 

 Other memorials of Davy include a portrait of 

 him in court dress occupying the presidential 

 chair of the Royal Society, the three medals he 

 received at various times from that body, the 

 Napoleon medal for the ' best experiment on 

 the galvanic fluid ' awarded him in 1807 by the 

 French Institute, whose action raised a storm 

 of indignation, because England and France 

 were then at war, aud many specimens of his 

 correspondence, not the least interesting being 

 some of the love letters he addressed to the 

 charming Mrs. Apreece, his marriage with 

 whom in 1812 terminated his connection with 

 the Institution. 



The articles associated with Fai-aday are still 

 more numerous. There is the original apparatus 

 with which he obtained the magneto-electric 

 spark ; the big electro-magnet with a copi^er 



disc spinning between its poles, which formed 

 the first machine for continuously generating an 

 electric current by means of magnetism, and 

 which is, therefore, the direct ancestor of the 

 modern dynamo ; early forms of galvanometers 

 and electrical-influence machines ; a series of 

 delicate glass vessels filled with various gases, 

 which he used in his determinations of magnetic 

 and diamagnetic properties, together with the 

 ' diamagnetic box ' he presented to Tyndall ; 

 the apparatus employed in the first experiments 

 on the liquefaction of gases, with some of the 

 tubes filled by himself ; many specimens of the 

 heavy glass in which he did such memorable 

 work ; and a curious bit of apparatus, consist- 

 ing apparently of a block of this glass, sur- 

 rounded with a coil of fine wire, which he 

 doubtless used in one of his numerous experi- 

 ments to discover a connection between light 

 and magnetism. The way in which the last is 

 put together shows plainly the influence of the 

 apprenticeship to a bookbinder which Faraday 

 served iu his earlj' life, and another beautifully 

 neat example of his expertness in this craft 

 may be seen in a bound manuscript volume of 

 Davy's lectures 'taken ofl^ from uotes by M. 

 Faraday,' which is particularly interesting as 

 having led to his engagemeut as an assistant in 

 the institution's laboratory. 



Among the apparatus belonging to men more 

 recently connected with the Royal Institution" 

 may be mentioned that used by Tyndall in his 

 investigations on radiant beat and on germ life, 

 the electrical instruments of Dr. Warren de la 

 Rue, and last, but not least, the magnificent 

 collection of physical apparatus that was the 

 property of the late Mr. William Spottiswoode, 

 successively Treasurer and Secretary of the In- 

 stitution. This includes a splendid series of 

 Niool's prisms and other apparatus for experi- 

 menting in the polarization of light, a huge 

 electro-magnet made by Ducretet, of Paris, and 

 the famous induction coil containing 280 miles 

 of wire in its secondary circuit and capable of 

 giving a spark 3J feet long. The whole has 

 just been presented to the Institution by Mr. 

 W. Hugh Spottiswoode, and it will form a most 

 worthy memorial of the year in which that so- 

 ciety completes its century of useful and honor- 

 able existence. 



