OCTOBKB 3, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



535 



for over sixty years. Early in his career 

 he devoted himself to a most important but 

 at that time little cultivated field of re- 

 search. He strove with conspicuous suc- 

 cess to place the oldest of industries on a 

 scientific basis, and to submit the complex 

 conditions of agriculture to a systematic 

 analysis. He studied the physiology of 

 plant life in the open air, not with the 

 object of penetrating the secrets of struc- 

 ture, but with the more directly utilitarian 

 aim of establishing the conditions of suc- 

 cessful and profitable cultivation. By a 

 long series of experiments alike well con- 

 ceived and laboriously carried out, he de- 

 termined the effects of variation in soil, 

 and its chemical treatment— in short, in 

 all the unknown factors with which the 

 farmer previously had to deal according 

 to empirical and local rules, roughly de- 

 duced from undigested experience by un- 

 critical and rudimentary processes of 

 inference. Gilbert had the faith, the in- 

 sight, and the courage to devote his life 

 to an investigation so difficult, so unprom- 

 ising, and so unlikely to bring the rich 

 rewards attainable by equal diligence in 

 other directions, as to offer no attraction 

 to the majority of men. The tabulated re- 

 sults of the Rothamsted experiments re- 

 main as a benefaction to mankind and a 

 monument of indomitable and disinterested 

 perseverance. 



It is impossible for me in this place to 

 offer more than the barest indication of 

 the great place in contemporary science 

 that has been vacated by the lamented 

 death of Professor Alfred Cornu, who so 

 worthily upheld the best traditions of sci- 

 entific France. He was gifted in a high 

 degree with the intellectual lucidity, the 

 mastery of form, and the perspicuous 

 methods which characterize the best expon- 

 ents of French thought in all departments 

 of study. After a brilliant career as a 

 student, he was chosen at the early age of 



twenty-six to fill one of the enviable posi- 

 tions more numerous in Paris than in Lon- 

 don, the professorship of physics at the 

 Ecole Polytechnique. In that post, which 

 he occupied to the end of his life, he found 

 what is probably the ideal combination for 

 a man of science— leisure and material 

 equipment for original research, together 

 with that close and stimulating contact 

 with practical affairs afforded by his duties 

 as teacher in a great school, almost ranking 

 as a department of State. Cornu was ad- 

 mirable alike in the use he made of his 

 opportunities and in his maimer of dis- 

 charging his duties. He was at once a 

 great investigator and a great teacher. I 

 shall not even attempt a summary, which 

 at the best must be very imperfect, of his 

 brilliant achievements in optics, the study 

 of his predilection, in electricity, in acous- 

 tics, and in the field of physics generally. 

 As a proof of the great estimation in which 

 he was held, it is sufficient to remind you 

 that he had filled the highest presidential 

 offices in French scientific societies, and 

 that he was a foreign member of our Royal 

 Society and a recipient of its Rumford 

 medal. In this country he had many 

 friends, attracted no less by his personal 

 and social qualities than by his command- 

 ing abilities. Some of those here present 

 may remember his appearance a few years 

 ago at the Royal Institution, and more re- 

 cently his delivery of the Rede Lecture at 

 Cambridge, when the University conferred 

 upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of 

 Science. His death has infiicted a heavy 

 blow upon our generation, upon France, 

 and upon the world. 



THE PROGRESS OP BELPAST. 



A great man has observed that the 'in- 

 telligent anticipation of events before they 

 occur' is a factor of some importance in 

 human affairs. One may suppose that in- 

 telligent anticipation had something to do 



