566 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXIX. No. 745 



which popular judgment will not destroy 

 will have to be profitable. 



John Feanklin Ceowell 



A PLEA FOR TERRESTRIAL AND 

 COSMIGAL PHYSICS "^ 



Once upon a time, at a certain small 

 dinner-party, the Duke of Wellington, on 

 being urged to express his opinion frankly 

 of the French marshals he had so success- 

 fully worsted in battle, pointed out their 

 good qualities in a most free and magnani- 

 mous manner, showing wherein each 

 particularly excelled. Whereupon one of 

 the party said: "WeU, sir, how was it 

 that with such various great qualifications 

 you licked them all, one after another?" 

 The duke, taken back, paused, then said: 

 "Well, I don't know exactly how it was, 

 but I think if any unexpected circum- 

 stance occurred in the midst of a battle 

 which deranged its whole plan, I could per- 

 haps organize another plan more quickly 

 than most of them." 



This power of being able to instantly 

 change an established train of thought, or 

 to be receptive to a new set of circum- 

 stances and facts, and thus to be capable 

 of imniediately setting up a fresh plan of 

 action, was tersely and most suggestively 

 expressed by Maxwell. When writing 

 Herbert Spencer about a subject of con- 

 troversy in the latter 's "First Principles," 

 he said : 



It is seldom that any man who tries to form a 

 system can prevent the system from forming 

 around him, and closing him in before he is forty. 

 Hence the wisdom of putting in some ingredient 

 to prevent crystallization and keep the system in 

 a colloidal condition. 



At the Ithaca meeting of the association, 

 two years ago last summer, I prefaced a 

 paper on the San Francisco earthquake by 



^ Presented at the Baltimore meeting of the 

 American Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, at the general interest meeting of the 

 Section on Physics, December 30, 1908. 



a few remarks calling attention to the dis- 

 parity of papers pertaining to the physics 

 of the earth and of the universe presented 

 to-day before sections A and B. I stated 

 it was my impression that this had not al- 

 ways been the case. Attend any similar 

 meeting abroad, be it in England, Ger- 

 many or France, and you are apt to find 

 the names of foremost physicists down for 

 papers on results of research in terrestrial 

 or cosmical physics. These eminent in- 

 vestigators evidently find food for exhil- 

 arating thought and stimulating work in 

 the unraveling of the phenomena of seis- 

 mology, meteorology, geodesy, hydrology, 

 atmospheric electricity, solar physics, tei'- 

 restrial magnetism, etc. They appear to 

 regard knowledge gained in the laboratory 

 and in the university merely as a means to 

 an end, not an end in themselves. 



The chairman of the Section of Mathe- 

 matics and Physics at the recent meeting 

 of the British Association was the well- 

 known physicist-meteorologist. Dr. W. N. 

 Shaw, director of the London Meteorolog- 

 ical Office. Besides making a most suggest- 

 ive presidential address, he led an inter- 

 esting discussion on "The Isothermal 

 Layer of the Atmosphere" — a live topic in 

 meteorology to-day. Those taking part in 

 the discussion were: Shaw, Rotch, Dines, 

 Cave, Turner, J. J. Thomson, Walker 

 and others. Several times has it occurred 

 within recent years at that association, 

 that, owing to the number of titles pre- 

 sented, it was necessary to have a subsec- 

 tion on "Cosmical Physics" which I am 

 very glad to note did not appai'ently meet 

 with the favor of the physicists themselves. 

 Our British colleagues want the cosmical 

 physicists to stay with them and not flock 

 off by themselves, and the present tend- 

 ency seems, accordingly, to be at the Brit- 

 ish Association, not to form such a sub- 

 section. Indeed, Dr. Shaw, in the address 

 referred to, said: 



