Note 218 — Chapter XII · CAMBRIDGE—1871 TO 1879.

Throughout the tenure of his Cambridge Chair Maxwell annually delivered a course of lectures on Heat and the Constitution of Bodies during the October Term; on Electricity in the Lent Term; and on Electro-Magnetism in the Easter Term. The character of these lectures very much resembled that of the early chapters in the Elementary Treatise on Electricity, which he wrote before taking the Cavendish papers in hand, and which was published in a fragmentary form by the Delegates of the Clarendon Press in October 1881. During the first four or five years that Maxwell lectured in Cambridge, candidates for the Ordinary or Poll Degree were compelled to attend professors’ lectures, and not unfrequently they would appear at the Cavendish Laboratory. Maxwell’s lectures were the delight of those who could follow him in his brilliant expositions and rapid changes of thought.