that there is no determination whatever of the mechanical equivalent of heat in the above table."
We have no space to go further into the particulars of this controversy, which was as discreditable to the assailants of Mayer as it was honorable to his disinterested defender. It is to be remembered that on all occasions, and in the most emphatic way, Professor Tyndall bore his testimony to the greatness of Dr. Joule's work, and deprecated every construction of his efforts which assumed that he was exalting the German at the expense of the Englishman. His demand was that Dr. Mayer be accorded a distinguished place among the founders of the modern doctrine of forces—such a place as he was incontestably entitled to by the scope, originality, and earliness of his work. But his opponents would allow the German doctor no merit whatever as a pioneer or discoverer, and no place in the circle of eminent men who created the new epoch of dynamical philosophy. The attack, however, upon Mayer signally failed of its intended purpose, and the parties who made it had the mortification of seeing that their ungenerous exertions were overruled to an end very different from that which they had designed. After the sifting and probing which followed the onslaught of the Scotchmen, the claims in behalf of Mayer were universally recognized as just; he was chosen by acclamation a member of the French Academy of Sciences, and the award of the Copley medal in 1871, the highest honor in the gift of the Royal Society of England, was the sharp rebuke of British Science to the unworthy efforts incited by a spurious patriotism to depreciate an illustrious foreign savant.
Dr. Mayer, as we have intimated, was a man of much suffering, which was undoubtedly aggravated by the neglect and injustice with which his labors were treated; and, when generous recognition of his services was made, the good effect on his disordered mind was palpable. It was while he was in the asylum, under treatment, that the Copley medal with Tyndall's accompanying letter was put into his hands. Dr. Mülburger, the attending physician, remarked, "I can still see him as he entered my room, beaming with gladness, to exhibit to me this rare distinction."
A monument is to be erected to Mayer at Heilbronn, and the scientific men of different countries are adding their contributions to those of his townsmen for the purpose of its erection.
