In the spring and autumn of 1785, 1786, 1787, and 1793, Cavendish made tours through most of the southern, midland, and western counties, and reached as far north as Whitby. The most memorable of these journeys was that undertaken in 1785, since during its course he visited James Watt at the Soho Works, and manifested great interest in Watt's inventions. This was only two years after the great controversy as to the discovery of the composition of water, but the meeting of the philosophers was of the most friendly character. On all these journeys considerable attention was paid to the geology of the country. Allusion has already been made to the two committees of the Royal Society to which the questions of the lightning-conductors at Purfleet, and of points _versus_ knobs for the terminals of conductors, were referred. Cavendish served on each of these committees, and supported Franklin's view against the recommendation of Mr. Wilson. On the first committee he probably came into personal communication with Franklin himself. Cavendish's life consisted almost entirely of his philosophical experiments. In other respects it was nearly without incident. He appears to have been so constituted that he must subject everything to accurate measurement. He rarely made experiments which were not _quantitative_; and he may be regarded as the founder of "quantitative philosophy." The labour which he expended over some of his measurements must have been very great, and the accuracy of many of his results is marvellous considering the appliances he had at disposal. When he had satisfied himself with the result of an experiment, he wrote out a full account and preserved it, but very seldom gave it to the public, and when he did publish accounts of any of his investigations it was usually a long time after the experiments had been completed. One of the consequences of his reluctance to publish anything was the long controversy on the discovery of the composition of water, which was revived many years afterwards by Arago's _eloge_ on James Watt; but a much more serious result was the loss to the world for so many years of discoveries and measurements which had to be made over again by Faraday, Kohlrausch, and others. The papers he published appeared in the _Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society_, to which he began to communicate them in 1766. On March 25, 1803, he was elected one of the eight Foreign Associates of the Institute of France. His _eloge_ was pronounced by Cuvier, in 1812, who said, "His demeanour and the modest tone of his writings procured him the uncommon distinction of never having his repose disturbed either by jealousy or by criticism." Dr. Wilson says, "He was almost passionless. All that needed for its apprehension more than the pure intellect, or required the exercise of fancy, imagination, affection, or faith, was distasteful to Cavendish. An intellectual head thinking, a pair of wonderfully acute eyes observing, and a pair