THE CHEMISTRY OF THE STARS. 1 



By Sir Norman Lockyer. 



When, on returning from India, I found that you had daring my 

 absence doue me the honor of unanimously electing me your president, 

 I began to cast about for a subject on which to address you. Curiously 

 enough, shortly afterwards an official inquiry compelled me to make 

 myself acquainted with the early doings of the Royal Commission of 

 the Exhibition of 1851, on which I have lately been elected to serve, 

 and in my reading I found a full account of the establishment of your 

 institute; of thelayingof the foundation stone by the late Prince Consort 

 in 1855, and of his memorable speech on that occasion. Here, I thought, 

 was my subject; and when I heard that the admirable work done by 

 this and other local institutions had determined the inhabitants of this 

 important city and neighborhood to crown the edifice by the foundation 

 of a university, I thought the matter settled. 



This idea, however, was nipped in the bud by a letter which informed 

 me that the hope had been expressed that I should refer to some branch 

 of astronomical work. 1 yielded at once, and because Lfelt that I might 

 thus be able to show cause why the making of knowledge should occupy 

 a large place in your new university, and thus distinguish it from other 

 universities more or less decadent. 



The importance of practical work, the educational value of the seek- 

 ing after truth by experiment aud observation on the part of even young 

 students, are now generally recognized. That battle has been fought 

 and won. But there is a tendency in the official direction of seats of 

 learning to consider what is known to be useful, because it is used, in 

 the first place. The fact that the unknown, that is the unstudied, is 

 the mine from which all scientific knowledge with its million applica- 

 tions has been won is too often forgotten. 



Bacon, who was the first to point out the importance of experiment 

 in the physical sciences, and who predicted the applications to which I 

 have referred, warns us that "lucifera experimenta non fructifera quae- 

 renda;" and surely we should highly prize those results which enlarge 



1 An inaugural address delivered at the Birmingham and Midland Institute on 

 October 26, 1898, by Sir Norman Lockyer, K. C. B., F. R. S., president. Printed in 

 Nature, November 10, 1898. Vol. 59, No. 1515. 



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