OCTOBEE 9, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



459 



mathematics and natural philosophy are 

 applicable in every part of the work of 

 daily life, and made good the contention 

 by presenting to the world, besides innu- 

 merable theoretical papers, instruments of 

 all degrees of complexity, from the har- 

 monic analyzer to an improved water-tap. 

 It was he who transfigured and trans- 

 formed the mariner's compass and the 

 lead-line into instruments which have been 

 of the greatest practical service. It was 

 he who, when experimental science was 

 merely a collection of facts or generaliza- 

 tions, conceived the idea of transfiguring 

 every branch of it by the application of 

 the principles of natural philosophy, as 

 Newton had transfigured astronomy. The 

 ambition of Thomson and Tait's "Natural 

 Philosophy," of which only the first vol- 

 ume reached the stage of publication, is a 

 fair index of Kelvin's genius. 



Strachey, on the other hand, by pro- 

 fession a military engineer, a great ad- 

 ministrator, head of the Public Works De- 

 partment in India, deeply versed in finance 

 and in all the other constituent parts of 

 administration, by his own natural instinct 

 demanded the assistance of science for 

 every branch of administration. In pro- 

 moting the development of botany, of 

 meteorology, or geodesy and of mathe- 

 matics, he was not administering the 

 patronage of a Macsenas, but claiming the 

 practical service of science m^ forestry, in 

 agriculture, in famine relief, in public 

 works, and in finance. You can not gauge 

 Strachey 's services to science by the papers 

 which he contributed to scientific societies, 

 if you leave out of account the fact that 

 they were really incidents in the opening 

 of fresh channels of communication be- 

 tween scientific work and the public ser- 

 vice. 



And Eliot, as meteorological reporter to 

 the government of India, an accomplished 

 mathematician ( for he was second wrangler 



and first Smith's prizeman in 1869), a 

 capable and devoted public servant, the 

 medium by which Strachey 's ideas as re- 

 gards the use of meteorology in adminis- 

 tration found expression in the government 

 of India, who caught the true perception 

 of the place of science in the service of the 

 state, and made his office the indispensable 

 handmaid of the Indian administration. 

 These three men together, who have all 

 passed away within a space of three months, 

 are such representative types of scientific 

 workers, complementary and supplement- 

 ary, that a similar combination is not likely 

 to occur again. All three indispensable, 

 yet not two alike, except in their en- 

 thusiasm for the sciences for the advance- 

 ment of which Section A exists. 



To these I might indeed add another 

 type, the private contributor to the phys- 

 ical exploration of the visible universe, of 

 which Ireland furnishes so many noble 

 examples; and in that connection let me 

 give expression to the sense of grievous 

 loss, to this association and to science, oc- 

 casioned by the premature death of W. E. 

 Wilson, of Daramona, a splendid example 

 of that type. 



In the division of the work of advancing 

 the science of mathematics and physics and 

 their application to the service of mankind, 

 I am reminded of Dryden's somewhat 

 lopsided comparison of the relative influ- 

 ence of music and song in his Ode to St. 

 Cecilia's Day. If I may be pardoned for 

 comparing small things with great, the 

 power of Timotheus's music over Alex- 

 ander's moods was hardly less complete 

 than Kelvin 's power to touch every depart- 

 ment of the working world with his genius. 

 But I may remind you that, after a pro- 

 longed description of the tremendous in- 

 fluence of Timotheus upon the victorious 

 hero, the poet deals in one stanza with his 

 nominal subject: 



