of Edinburgh, Session 1879 - 80 . 
323 
As Sir A. Grant has well said, he came to know the Scottish 
Universities better even than do Scotsmen themselves. To this we 
may add that he knew also, as few have ever known them, the 
characteristics and the wants of Scottish students. Our grief for 
his loss is at least tempered by the fact that he died at his post 
after an unusually extended term of active usefulness. He who has 
in person instructed, alike by clear precept and noble example, 
many thousands of the youth of a nation, cannot fail to have a 
happy and lasting influence on that nation’s progress. Philip Kel- 
land was, in the very highest sense, a benefactor to Scotland. 
In spite of all his hard week-day work, he did not shrink from 
clerical duty on Sundays, very often reading the service, or preach- 
ing, in some of the Episcopal Churches in Edinburgh. In his 
sermons, as in his secular addresses, he was studiously quiet and 
simple, avoiding all mere popular arts of word-painting ; but he 
was none the less effective in consequence. Ho one in the crowded 
Assembly Hall on the 22d April last, when he appeared for the 
last time before the public, can forget the profound impression pro- 
duced on the whole audience by the few but earnest and loving 
words which he then addressed to the graduates. A fortnight later 
he was followed to his grave by the majority of those who had 
vociferously applauded his simple and touching eloquence. 
His earlier mathematical work was very much influenced by his 
admiration for Fourier and Cauchy. The latter, indeed, was his 
personal friend. His Theory of Heat , and various elaborate papers 
in the “ Camb. Phil. Trans.” and the “ Phil. Mag.,” show how 
Kelland attempted to base the explanation of the phenomena of 
heat upon the mutual action of systems of particles exerting 
forces on one another at a distance. The analysis employed is 
of a nature very similar to Cauchy’s; but we need not examine 
these attempts closely, for, though they show great mathematical 
ingenuity, they are now known to be based upon an unsound 
physical assumption. 
He was much more suceessful when his physical assumptions 
were more accurate, as in his investigations of the motion of waves 
in canals, and in the calculation of the intensity of light which had 
passed through a grating. Another real service which he did to 
physical science consisted in his having edited and reprinted the 
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