small room in the top of the tower, and all the windows are provided
with broad stone ledges without and within the window, the two
portions being in the same horizontal plane, for the support of
heliostats or other instruments. The building is heated with hot
water, but in the magnetic observatory the pipes are all of copper and
the fittings of gun-metal. Open fireplaces for basket fires are also
provided. Over the principal entrance of the laboratory is placed a
stone statue of the present Duke of Devonshire, together with the arms
of the university and of the Cavendish family, and the Cavendish
motto, "Cavendo Tutus." Maxwell presented to the laboratory, in 1874,
all the apparatus in his possession. He usually gave a course of
lectures on heat and the constitution of bodies in the Michaelmas
term; on electricity in the Lent term; and on electro-magnetism in the
Easter term. The following extract from his inaugural lecture,
delivered in October, 1871, is worthy of the attention of all students
of science:--
Science appears to us with a very different aspect after we
have found out that it is not in lecture-rooms only, and by
means of the electric light projected on a screen, that we may
witness physical phenomena, but that we may find illustrations
of the highest doctrines of science in games and gymnastics, in
travelling by land and by water, in storms of the air and of the
sea, and wherever there is matter in motion.
The habit of recognizing principles amid the endless variety of
their action can never degrade our sense of the sublimity of
nature, or mar our enjoyment of its beauty. On the contrary, it
tends to rescue our scientific ideas from that vague condition
in which we too often leave them, buried among the other
products of a lazy credulity, and to raise them into their
proper position among the doctrines in which our faith is so
assured that we are ready at all times to act on them.
Experiments of illustration may be of very different kinds. Some
may be adaptations of the commonest operations of ordinary life;
others may be carefully arranged exhibitions of some phenomenon
which occurs only under peculiar conditions. They all, however,
agree in this, that their aim is to present some phenomenon to
the senses of the student in such a way that he may associate
with it some appropriate scientific idea. When he has grasped
this idea, the experiment which illustrates it has served its
purpose.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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