Augustus Desire Waller. 



XXIX 



members, and was at one time its Chairman. The report which was published 

 ten years later is a most valuable document, and formed another example of 

 how Waller's academic work was fruitful from the practical standpoint. 



During the last few years of his life, he became interested in three new 

 subjects, and threw himself with his usual enthusiasm into all of them. His 

 laboratory at one time was, or seemed to be, wholly devoted to one of these ; 

 at another time, it was one or other of the remaining two. This was not 

 only the case at the South Kensington laboratory, but the same fervour was 

 manifested at his private but well known laboratory at his home in Grove 

 End Eoad. The old roomy studio (for the house formerly belonged to a well- 

 known artist) was transformed not only into a laboratory, but became the 

 principal living room of the professor and his family, where they received 

 their friends scientific and otherwise. It opened into a spacious garden which 

 also was a great recreation to the workers. The large table in the middle of 

 the room was crowded with electrical and other apparatus, when by an 

 ingenious arrangement of pulleys, the top was suddenly hoisted ceiling- wards, 

 and a full-sized billiard table was revealed. Waller was as keen on games as he 

 was on work, and billiards were not the least of his accomplishments. When 

 he first took to driving a motor car, all his energy seemed devoted to mastering 

 the intricacies of its mechanism and management. Another of the many 

 other interests of his many-sided life was his fondness for animals, and 

 especially for bull-dogs. The ancestor of several generations of these was 

 Jimmy who became well known as his constant companion in the car and in 

 the laboratory. He was the faithful guardian of the. car when his master left 

 it standing, his fierce countenance being sufficient to repel intruders in spite 

 of his gentle nature. Jimmy appeared at several Koyal Society Soirees, with 

 his paws in basins of salt solution which were connected to a galvanometer 

 or electrometer in order to demonstrate the accompanying electrical changes 

 of his heart's activity to an admiring audience. The Home Secretary of that 

 day, Mr. Herbert, now Lord Gladstone, had to explain to anti-vivisectionist 

 members of the House of Commons that this was not a brutal experiment, 

 and that Jimmy suffered as much or as little pain as a child paddling in the 

 sea. 



But these are digressions. I had begun to speak of the subjects which 

 interested Waller in later years. One of these which only needs a passing 

 mention was of a polemical nature, and related to certain movements which 

 with the aid of high magnification can be shown to occur in plants. Waller 

 attributed these not to growth, but to mere turgescence such as occurs when 

 many substances are placed in water. 



The other two topics to which he devoted himself were of a more serious 

 nature. One of these was the investigation of the so-called "emotive 

 response," and the other the measurement of the cost of muscular work by 

 estimation of the carbonic acid exhaled. 



Both were pursued with characteristic intensity ; his friends inveigled into 

 the laboratory had to submit to be put " on the wires " in order that the 



