SPECIAL MEETING. Ixxix 



one know better than MacGregor that one has almost got to 

 be an investigator in order to be a success as an inspiring 

 teacher. How he managed to do the work he did, with prac- 

 tically nothing to do it with, has always remained a mystery to 

 me. One wonders whether he would have accomplished much 

 more, and how much, if he had had even the modest equip- 

 ment of our physical laboratory of today. This fact is to be 

 borne in mind, that his going to Edinburgh was the end of his 

 career as an investigator; I do not know of a single paper of a 

 research nature that he published after leaving Dalhousic. 

 He became a reformer there, and administrative work ab- 

 sorbed his whole energy — and killed him, a warning of a 

 barren portion of life and its ending which some of us might 

 well take to heart. 



I was one of his students in 1883-5, and I have been trying 

 to recall what his so-called laboratory was like in that old 

 building on the Parade; but though I can well recall the little 

 lecture-room with its sloping floor, I cannot remember any 

 laboratory. Of "course, w^e students took only lectures; there 

 was no such thing as a physical laboratory course. There 

 was a course in practical chemistry which a few curious 

 beings elected. I was one whose curiositj^ was aroused; we 

 had practically no instruction, but were given a book of 

 directions, and shown the aerie in ths attic called the labo- 

 ratory, and left to ourselves. We tried many combinations 

 of the contents of bottles whose properties we were pro- 

 foundly ignorant of, and got many strange and unexpected 

 "reactions," and explosions; but how the buildings and our 

 lives escaped is one of those results which a prophet would 

 not have foretold. I do not know what chemistry we learned, 

 in the process, but we came away with a profound respect for 

 Physics. When in 1887 I came back as tutor in Mathema- 

 tics and Physics, MacGregor was in his new laboratory in 

 what we now call the Old Building on Carleton Street. He 



