Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/676

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658
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

school had a growing reputation, and afterward enlarged the sphere of its benefits. It was for many years one of the chief schools in the eastern part of the State, and was resorted to by all classes.

The society[1] also accumulated a valuable library, which was added to and maintained until destroyed by the Federal troops on the occupation of Georgetown during the civil war. Also during the war the school itself was discontinued.

The Winyaw Indigo Society still exists in Georgetown as a social club, but has no connection with indigo except in name. The old hall of the society is now occupied by the public graded schools of Georgetown.

Thus a new social and industrial order has established itself upon the old. The children of these schools to-day know nothing of indigo. The process of its manufacture, once so important, is now forgotten. But to the traveler through the country the branching herbs of the wayside with their bluish-green leaves are eloquent with the memories of an era long past, and of a forgotten industry whose records are hidden away within the pages of a few obscure old volumes.

THE SCIENTIFIC WORK OF TYNDALL.

By the Right Hon. LORD RAYLEIGH, F. R. S., etc.,

PROFESSOR OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, ROYAL INSTITUTION OF GREAT BRITAIN.

IT is fitting that the present season should not pass without a reference on these evenings to the work of him whose tragic death a few months since was felt as a personal grief and loss by every member of the Royal Institution. With much diffidence I have undertaken the task to-night, wishing that it had fallen to one better qualified by long and intimate acquaintance to do justice to the theme. For Tyndall was a personality of exceeding interest. He exercised an often magical charm upon those with whom he was closely associated, but when his opposition was aroused he showed himself a keen controversialist. My subject of to-night is but half the story.

Even the strictest devotion of the time at my disposal to a survey of the scientific work of Tyndall will not allow of more than a very imperfect and fragmentary treatment. During his thirty


  1. An account of the Winyaw Indigo Society, and the school established by it, is given in a Paper on Colonial Education in South Carolina, read before the South Carolina Historical Society, August 6, 1883, by Edward McCrady, Jr., and afterward published in vol. iv of the Collections of the Historical Society of South Carolina.