Cuvier says: 'Il convient lui-même que cet acte spontané de reconnaissance religieuse en faveur d'un homme d'une autre communion lui parut la plus touchante des récompenses; mais il ne se dissimulait pas qu'il en avait obtenu une autre qui sera plus durable. En effet, c'est en travaillant pour les pauvres qu'il a fait ses plus belles découvertes....
'Chacun sait que dans ses plus belles espérances on eut pour objet la nature de la chaleur et de la lumière, ainsi que les lois de leur propagation; et c'était là effectivement ce qu'il importait le plus de bien connaître pour nourrir, vêtir, chauffer et éclairer avec économie un grand rassemblement d'hommes.'
Other measures for the benefit of the country were carried out at the same time.
A Military Academy was formed, principally with a view to bring forward extraordinary talents and employ them in the civil or military public service. Anyone was admissible. The children of the meanest mechanics and day-labourers, provided they had _very extraordinary natural genius_, a healthy constitution, and a good character, were educated. It was an establishment designed for the encouragement of genius, and for calling forth into public utility talents which would otherwise remain buried and lost in obscurity.
Measures were adopted for improving the breed of horses and horned cattle in Bavaria and the Palatinate. An attempt was made to put an end to usury in Munich and to improve the highways and public roads, by employing the soldiery in repairing them and preserving order and public tranquillity on them.
A new English Garden was formed, beginning upon the ramparts of the town. It was nearly six English miles in circumference. Within the Garden was a fine and very valuable farm, with thirty of the finest cows procured from Switzerland, Flanders, the Tyrol, and other places. There was a public coffee-house in the middle of the Garden for refreshment and public resort.
The scientific work which Sir B. Thompson did whilst in the service of the Elector of Bavaria between 1783 and 1794, shows his energy and originality, his accuracy and his depth.
When at Mannheim in July 1785 he made experiments in the presence of Professor Hemmer, of the Electoral Academy of Sciences of Mannheim, on the propagation of heat through various substances; on the increased difficulty of conduction of heat through the torricellian vacuum; on the effect of humidity in increasing the conducting power of the air; and on the effect of air of different degrees of density. The Duke ordered the meteorological instrument maker to the academy at Mannheim to come to Munich, and to spare neither labour nor expense in providing the complete apparatus necessary for the experiments.