September 18, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



393 



Faraday's, has not only affected our way of 

 regarding the older phenomena of electric- 

 ity, it has, in the hands of Hertz and 

 others, led to the discovery of whole regions 

 of phenomena previously undreamt of. It 

 is sad to think that his premature death 

 prevented him from reaping the harvest 

 he had sown. His writings are, however, 

 with us, and are a storehouse to which we 

 continually turn, and never, I think, with- 

 out finding something valuable and sug- 

 gestive. 



' Thus ye teach us day by day, 

 Wisdom, though now far away. ' 



The past year has been rich in matters of 

 interest to physicists. In it has occurred 

 the jubilee of Lord Kelvin's tenure of the 

 Professorship of Natural Philosophy at the 

 University of Glasgow. Some of us were 

 privileged to see this year at Glasgow an 

 event unprecedented in the history of phys- 

 ical science in England, when congratula- 

 tions to Lord Kelvin on the jubilee of his 

 professorship were offered by people of 

 every condition and country. Every scien- 

 tific society and every scientific man is 

 Lord Kelvin's debtor ; but no society and 

 no body of men owe him a greater debt 

 than Section A of the British Association ; 

 he has done more for this section than any 

 one else, he has rarely missed its meetings, 

 he has contributed to the section papers 

 which will make its proceedings imperish- 

 able, and by his enthusiasm he has year by 

 year inspired the workers of this section to 

 renew with increased vigour their struggle 

 to penetrate the secrets of nature. Long 

 may we continue to receive from him the 

 encouragement and assistance which have 

 been so freely given for the past half cen- 

 tury. 



By the death of Sir W. E. Grove, the in- 

 ventor of Grove's cell, we have lost a physi- 

 cist whose name is a familiar one in every 

 laboratory in the world. Besides the 

 Grove cell, we owe to him the discovery of 



the gas battery, and a series of researches 

 on the electrical behavior of gases, whose 

 importance is only now beginning to be ap- 

 preciated. His essay on the correlation of 

 the physical forces had great influence in 

 promoting that belief in the unity of the 

 various branches of physics which is one of 

 the characteristic features of modern and 

 natural philosophy. 



In the late Prof. Stoletow, of Moscow, we 

 have lost the author of a series of most in- 

 teresting researches on the electrical prop- 

 erties of gases illuminated by ultra-violet 

 light, researches which, from their place of 

 publication, are, I am afraid, not so well 

 known in this country as they deserve to 

 be. 



As one who unfortunately of late j^ears 

 has had only too many opportunities of 

 judging of the teaching of science in our 

 public and secondary schools, I should like 

 to bear testimony to the great improvement 

 which has taken place in the teaching of 

 physics in these schools during the past ten 

 years. The standard attained in physics 

 by the pupils of these schools is increasing 

 year by year, and great credit is due to 

 those by whose labors this improvement 

 has been accomplished. I hope I may not 

 be considered ungrateful if I express the 

 opinion that in the zeal and energy which 

 is now spent in the teaching of physics in 

 schools, there may lurk a temptation to 

 make the pupils cover too much ground. 

 You may by careful organization and ar- 

 rangement ensure that boys shall be taken 

 over many branches of physics in the course 

 of a short time ; it is indeed not uncommon 

 to find boys of 17 or 18 who have com- 

 passed almost the whole range of physical 

 subjects. But although you may increase 

 the rate at which information is acquired, 

 you cannot increase in anything like the 

 same proportion the rate at which the sub- 

 ject is assimilated, so as to become a means 

 of strengthening the mind and a permanent 



