Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/428

412 first American ancestor, who settled in Windsor, Conn., in 1639. Other subjects than those already specified, mentioned by Prof. Newton as those on which Prof. Loomis made experiments and published papers, were the phenomena of optical moving figures; the vibrations sent out from waterfalls as the water flows over certain dams; the orbits of the satellites of Uranus; the temperature of the planets; the variations of light of the stars η Argus and Algol; and the comet of 1861.

A striking illustration of the value of Prof. Loomis's improvement in the construction of weather maps is cited by Prof. Newton as among his recollections of conversations with Sir George Airy and Le Verrier. The former, before Prof. Loomis's maps were published, expressed himself as having little hope for the progress of meteorology in the shape in which the data then appeared. Le Verrier, exhibiting, in 1869, charts made like those of Prof. Loomis, said: "I care not for the mass of observations made in the usual form; what I want is the power and material for making such charts as these."

A description of Prof. Loomis's characteristics as a teacher is given by a biographer in the Phrenological Journal, who says: "He was a man of quick impressions and very solid convictions. A really kind man, but so strict in his views of propriety and duty that the student, as a rule, regarded him as severe. "We remember him well as he appeared in the lecture-room of the university, always calm and even-toned, strict in his demands upon students who might be reciting, very brief in question, a mere trace of a smile if the student acquitted himself well, and nothing more than 'Sit down' when a student showed his ignorance of the lesson by his blundering. He was never sarcastic, never censorious. There might be a coldness of manner and a slight sharpness in his tone when annoyed, but these were passing cloudlets, so to speak, in the calm blue of his manner. He awed the frisky, mischievous ones into quiet, even well-behaved young men while they were under his penetrating eye, so that we never knew of a single instance of insubordination in his room during our course." In a description in general harmony with this. Prof. Newton includes an acknowledgment that was made by Chief-Justice Waite, that "if I have been successful in life, I owe that success to the influence of tutor Loomis more than to any other cause whatever."