THE eulogy of Lord Kelvin contributed to
your columns in tcr111s so ·appropriately simple, a eulogy
so sincere, as we all know, and more authoritative than
could be pronounced by anyone else in the world, furnishes
an incident that must i111press the minds of all true
science. It is not my purpose to intrude where I have
no business, but I do feel must keenly the strong call there
is to English men of science to see that the hidden work of
Stokes not remain any longer concealed. There is
not the least doubt that his greatness and true worth escaped
the observation of contemporaries outside the circle of real
scientific workers, and has been one conspicuous
occasion recently when the order of his merit has been
About ten years ago the attention of Stokes was attracted
some work in which I was engaged, and this started a correspondence. I had no previous personal acquaintance
with him, and I am sure he had no previous scientific
acquaintance with me, but notwi1hstanding this he
placed the vast powers of his mind at my disposal,
and assisted me with encouragement and advice that from best friend would have been liberal in amount, whilst they could have been equalled from no other source.
The abundance, lucidity and punctuality of his correspond were amazing. I have had as many as three letters
from him in .one day, and on a particular occasion a telegram addition, to say that he feared he had ex.pressed
himself in one of the letters with too much confidence. I was naturally not a little proud of this connection with a
great man, but if my pride had tended to assume the form
of vanity, that would have been frustrated by the discovery
I was ever afterwards making of the apparently endless
number of scientific workers who have received from Stokes
the same unstinted help.
I wish, therefore, to express the hope that in any memoir
of Stokes that is published there should be some attempt
to gather the unostentatious testimony that would be so
cheerfully given by those who are so much beholden to the
and good man who has passed from among us. It
seems to me to be at the least a duty to scientific history
to help our posterity to see clearly that the order of Stokes's
merit as a man and a philosopher was that of Faraday
bl your issue of February s. l\lr. Worthington G. Smith
says " the painter was so incompetent to deceive that he
made the two touch." There is some mistake
here. ;\f. Vignon 's reproductions of Signor Pia's photo-
graphs show quite a large space-nearly equal to the height
of the head·---between the two head-tops. From Mr. Smith's
diagram I infer that he has mistaken one of the wa(er-
stai·n outlines for the head-top of the back view figure. If
so, I do nut wonder at his thinking the painter " incompe-
tent."
The hypothesis of a painted positive turned negative, to
which most of your correspondents seem to incline, presents
one difficulty which I have not as yet seen noticed. No one would paint a shaded positive by way of simulating a sup-
posed soiling of the shroud by the presence of the body
within it; the intention must have been to make a picture-
!<) represent a miraculous impression, perhaps, but still a
pictorial one, else why a positive? Then, such a picture
WOLild naturally he shaded for a more or less side light, so
that the originally light and now dark portions would be
more or less on one side of the various limbs and features,
instead of in their centres as they actually show on th•J
shroud.
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