26 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENGES 
and skillful navigator. As his mind enriched everything he touched, 
he invented an improved quadrant and several marine appliances that 
have benefited the science of navigation, including a new method of 
taking deep sea soundings. 
In 1849 he contributed a series of papers to the Royal Society on 
‘““The Dynamical Theory of Heat,’’ which were epoch-making, as they 
placed the whole science of thermo-dynamics on a rational and scienti- 
fic basis. These researches were followed, in 1852, by his remarkable 
discovery of ‘‘The Principle of Dissipation of Energy.’’ It has been 
summed up by a writer in Nature, as follows: ‘‘During any trauns- 
formation of energy from one form into another, there is always a 
certain portion of the energy changed into heat, and the heat thus 
produced becomes dissipated and diffused by radiation and conduction. 
Consequently, there is a tendency in nature for all the energy in the 
universe, of whatever kind it be, gradually to assume the form of heat, 
and having done so, to become equally diffused. This gradual degenera- 
tion of energy is perpetually going on; and sooner or later, unless there 
is some restorative power, of which we at present have no knowledge, 
the present state of things must come to an end.’’ 
These conclusions open up some interesting problems. What will be 
the condition of the universe after ail the energy has been dissipated 
and diffused? Will the molecules stop vibrating? Will the planets 
and siderial worlds cease to rotate and revolve? Will matter be gath- 
ered in vast aggregations, or be diffused through space in ultimate 
atoms? 
But Kelvin was not a materialist. Life was still, to him, a great 
and over-mastering mystery, and in one of his papers he used this lan- 
guage: ‘‘It seems to me most probable that the animal body does not 
act as a thermo-dynamic engine in converting heat produced by the 
combination of food with the oxygen of the inhaled air, but that it 
acts in a measure more nearly analagous to that of an electric motor 
working in virtue of energy supplied to it by a voltaic battery.’’ Ah, 
whence comes that energy which segregates life from all other mani- 
festations of force in nature? 
A few years ago, when he published a paper on ‘‘The Age of the 
Earth,’’ to which he assigned a shorter period, (about 30,000,000 years,) 
than did contemporary geologists, his intimations that there would be a 
limit of but a few thousand years to its future habitability because 
of the rapid consumption of the oxygen of the atmosphere, were ex- 
tensively commented upon, both by laymen and men of science. Accord- 
ing to Kelvin’s figures, there are about 1130 million of millions of tons 
of oxygen in our atmosphere, and not one ton too much. On the other 
hand, there is a total annual withdrawal of about 2,500,000,000 tons, 
caused by the respiration of human beings and animals, and the com- 
bustion of wood and coal fires. Happily this loss of oxygen is being 
