Inaugural Address. 485 



transmits the vibrations which we call light, and he 

 thereupon constructed his famous electro-magnetic 

 theory of light, which conceives light to consist 

 of vibrations not of a comparatively gross material 

 like ordinary matter, but of electricity itself. 



This theory received at first little support from the 

 German physicists, who are inclined to scoif at every 

 idea that is not of German origin. Amongst a crowd 

 of scoffers, however, one open-minded enquirer was 

 found, who said to himself : " If Clerk Maxwell is 

 right, I ought to find that if I start artificial electric 

 vibrations they will propagate themselves like light 

 waves." This man's name was Hertz, and he promptly 

 set about producing electrical waves, purely with a 

 view of testing the truth of Maxwell's theory. He 

 had many difficulties to overcome before he succeeded 

 in producing them in sufficiently rapid succession, but 

 this was at last accomplished and Maxwell's theory 

 triumphantly vindicated. The electric vibrations 

 comported themselves like light — it is true that a 

 stone wall was as transparent for them as a sheet of 

 glass is for ordinary light, but they were reflected by 

 a metal plate and could be brought to a focus, etc., 

 etc. iSTow this invisible light, as we may call it, is 

 what Marconi and others have employed in their so- 

 called wireless telegraphy, but without Maxwell and 

 Hertz, it would have remained undiscovreed to this day. 



But to come closer to Natural History. There has, 

 I suppose, been no discovery in recent years which 

 promises greater benefit to men than that of the cause 

 of malaria, and the manner in which the disease is 

 transmitted from one patient to another. 



I suppose you are all aware that this dreadful 

 disease, which is one of the chief causes which pre- 



