rom Pittsburg I went
to Baltimore, where Sir William Thomson was occupied in delivering
lectures to the students of the Johns Hopkins University. In all these
American towns one very curious feature is that they all have great
educational establishments, endowed and formed by private munificence. In
Canada there is the McGill University, and in nearly every place one goes
to there is a university, like the Johns Hopkins at Baltimore, where Johns
Hopkins left 3,500,000 dollars to be devoted entirely to educational
purposes; and that university is under the management of one of the most
enlightened men in America, Professor Grillman, and he has as his
lieutenants Professors Rowland, Mendenhall, and other well-known men, and
each professor is in his own line particularly eminent. Sir William
Thomson delivered there a really splendid course of lectures. From
Baltimore I went through Philadelphia to Boston. I visited Long Branch,
and I spent a long time in New York, so that from what I have said you
will gather that I spent a good deal of my time in the States. Wherever I
went I devoted all my leisure time to inquiry into the telegraphic,
telephonic, and electric light arrangements in existence. I visited all
the manufactories I could get to, and I did all I possibly could to enable
me to return home and afford information, and perhaps amusement, to my
fellow-members of this Society.

As an illustration of the intense heat we experienced, I may mention that
it was at one time perfectly impossible to make the thermometer budge. The
temperature of the blood is about 97 or 98 degrees, and if the temperature
of the air be below the temperature of the blood, of course when the hand
is applied to the thermometer the mercury rises. In one of our journeys up
the Pennsylvania Road we tried to make the thermometer budge as usual, but
could not, which proved that the temperature of the air inside the Pullman
car in which we traveled was the same as that of the blood.

The American Association is of course based on the British Association.
Its mode of administration is a little different. It is divided into
sections, as is the British Association, but the sections are not called
the same. For instance, in the British Association, Section A is devoted
entirely to physics, but in the American Association, Section A is devoted
to astronomy and Section B to physics. In the British Association, Section
G is devoted to mechanics, but in Ameri