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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1889.

TWENTY YEARS.

A REMINDER that to-day is the twentieth anni

versary of the first issue of NATURE, will not, perhaps, be without interest to our readers, and certainly affords food for reflection to those who in various capacities have been more or less closely connected with this journal from the first.

"When another half-century has passed," said Prof. Huxley in our first number, "curious readers of the back numbers of NATURE will probably look on our best' not without a smile.'"

It will probably be so, but though twenty years is hardly a sufficient interval to make our smiles at our earlier efforts supercilious, it is enough to test whether progress has been made, and whether the forward path is pursued with growing or with waning force.

As regards this journal itself, we may claim that it has not disappointed the hopes of its founders, nor failed in the task it undertook; and we make this claim all the more emphatically because we feel that what has been accomplished has not been due to our own efforts so much as to the unfailing help we have always received from the leaders in all branches of natural science. This help has not been limited to their contributions to our columns, but has consisted also of advice and suggestions which have been freely asked and as freely given. Not the least part of our duty, and even privilege, to-day is to state openly how small our own part has been, and to render grateful thanks to those to whom it is chiefly due that NATURE has a recognized place in the machinery of science, and has secured an audience in all parts of the civilized world.

We do not wish, however, to narrow our retrospect of VOL. XLI.-NO. 1045.

the last twenty years by confining our attention to the measure of success which these pages have won. It has been attained, as we have shown, by the aid of nearly all the best-known scientific writers and workers, not in Britain only but in many countries old and new; and we cannot believe that they would thus have banded themselves together if evidence had not been given of an honest desire for the good of science and for the "promotion of natural knowledge," or if the attainment of these objects had not been regarded by us as of more importance than a journalistic success. Thus, on its twentieth birthday, we would think not so much of the growth of NATURE as of the advance which in the last twenty years it has chronicled.

A formal history of science for that period would be a formidable task, but it is already possible to discern what will probably appear to posterity to be the most salient characteristics of the last two decades.

In the physical sciences, the enormous development of the atomic theory, and the establishment of a connection between the theories of electricity and light, are perhaps the two main achievements of the years we are considering. Methods of accomplishing the at first sight impossible task of measuring atomic magnitudes have been devised. Our own volumes contain some of the most interesting papers of Sir William Thomson on this subject, and the close agreement in the results attained by very different methods is sufficient proof that, if only approximations, they are approximations we may trust. The brilliant vortex atom theory of Sir William Thomson has not as yet achieved the position of a proved hypothesis, but has stimulated mathematical inquiry. A number of very powerful researches have added to our knowledge of a most difficult branch of mathematics, which may yet furnish the basis of a theory which shall deduce the nature of matter and the phenomena of radiation from a single group of assumptions.

The theory of gases has been extended in both direc

B

tions. The able attempt of Van der Waals to bring both vapour and liquid within the grasp of a single theory is complementary to the extension by Crookes, Hittorf, and Osborne Reynolds of our knowledge of phenomena which are best studied in gases of great tenuity.

The gradual expansion of thermodynamics, and in general of the domain of dynamics from molar to molecular phenomena, has been carried on by Willard Gibbs, J. J. Thomson, and others, until, in many cases, theory seems to have outrun not only our present experimental powers, but almost any conceivable extension which they may hereafter undergo.

The pregnant suggestion of Maxwell that light is an electro-magnetic phenomenon has borne good fruit. Gradually the theory is taking form and shape, and the epoch-making experiments of Hertz, together with the recent work of Lodge, J. J. Thomson, and Glazebrook,, furnish a complete proof of its fundamental hypotheses. The great development of the technical applications of electricity has stimulated the public interest in this science, and has necessitated a more detailed study of magnetism and of the laws of periodic currents. The telephone and the microphone have eclipsed the wonders of the telegraph, and furnish new means of wresting fresh secrets from Nature.

Science has become more than ever cosmopolitan, owing chiefly to the imperative necessity for an early agreement as to the values of various units for a common nomenclature, and for simultaneous observations in widely separated localities. International Conferences are the order of the day, and the new units which they have defined are based upon experiments by many firstrate observers in many lands, amongst whom the name o Lord Rayleigh stands second to none.

On the side of chemistry the periodic law of Mendeleeff has become established as a generalization of the first importance, and the extraordinary feat of foretelling the physical properties of an as yet undiscovered element has attracted to it the attention of the whole scientific world.

The once permanent gases are permanent no more. Dulong and Petit's law has found a complement in the methods of Raoult. The old doctrine of valency is giving way to more elastic hypotheses. The extraordinary progress of organic chemistry, which originated in the work and influence of Liebig and the Giessen school, has continued at an accelerated rate. The practical value of even the most recondite investigations of pure science has again been exemplified by the enormous development of the coal-tar industry, and by the numerous syntheses of organic products which have added to the material resources of the community.

The increase of our knowledge of the sun by means of localized spectroscopic observation; the application of photography to astronomy, and more recently still the extension and generalization of the nebular hypothesis are perhaps the most remarkable developments of those

branches of science which relate to astronomy. Stars which no human eye will ever see are now known to us as surely as those which are clearly visible. The efforts to reduce nebula, comets, and stars under one common law, as various cases of the collision or aggregation of meteoritic swarms, and the striking investigations of Prof. Darwin on the effects of tidal action, and on the application of the laws of gases to a meteoritic plenum, give promise of a fuller knowledge of the birth and death of worlds.

In the biological sciences, the progress during the last twenty years has consisted chiefly in the firm establishment of the Darwinian doctrine, and the application of it and its subordinate conceptions in a variety of fields of investigation. The progress of experimental physiology has been marked by increasing exactitude in the application of physical methods to the study of the properties of living bodies, but it has not as yet benefited, as have other branches of biology, from the fecundating influence of Darwin's writings: hence there is no very prominent physiological discovery to be recorded. The generation of scientific men which is now coming to middle age has been brought up in familiarity with Mr. Darwin's teaching, and is not affected by anything like hostility or a priori antagonism to such views. The result is seen in the vast number of embryological researches (stimulated by the theory that the development of the individual is an epitome of the development of the race) which these twenty years have produced, and in the daily increasing attention to that study of the organism as living thing definitely related to its conditions which Darwin himself set on foot. The marine laboratories of Naples, Newport, Beaufort, and Plymouth, have come into existence (as in earlier years their forerunners on the coast of France, and served to organize and facili tate the study of living plants and animals. The Challenger and other deep-sea exploring expeditions have sailed forth and returned with their booty, which has been described with a detail and precision unknown in former times. The precise methods of microscopic study by means of section-cutting-due originally to Stricker, of Vienna-have within these twenty years made the study of cell-structure and cell-activity as essential a part of morphology as it had already become of physiology. These, and the frank adoption of the theory of descent, have swept away old ideas of classification and affinities, and have relegated the Ascidian "polyps" of old days to the group of Vertebrata, and the Sporges to the Cœlenterates. The nucleus of the protoplasmic cell -which twenty years ago had fallen from the high position of importance accorded to it by Schwannhas, through the researches of Butschli, Flemming, and Van Beneden, been reinstated, and is now shown to be the seat of all-important activities in connection with celldivision and the fertilization of the egg. The discovery of

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