Natural Science 



A Monthly Review of Scientific Progress 



January 1899 



NOTES AND COMMENTS. 

 Pure Science. 



The debt of the world to pure science was the subject of Prof. 

 J. J. Stevenson's (retiring President's) address to the New York 

 Academy of Sciences on February 28, 1898, and the lecture is now 

 available in the last volume of the Annals (xi. (1898) pp. 177-192). 

 The thesis is an interesting one — "That the foundation of industrial 

 advance was laid by workers in pure science, for the most part 

 ignorant of utility and caring little about it," and the evidence should 

 give pause to those impatient utilitarian spirits who would weigh all 

 scientific work on the balance of " practical results." From the 

 history of astronomy and geology, physics and chemistry, botany and 

 zoology, examples are taken which show that what might have seemed 

 out-of-the-way investigations — prompted by the curious or con- 

 templative spirit — have had the most unlooked-for and far-reaching- 

 results in practice. It is not, indeed, to be forgotten that the converse 

 thesis is also true, — that practical lore has in hundreds of cases reacted 

 upon theory. The investigator prepares . for the inventor, but the 

 inventor in turn stimulates the investigator. Yet is there not a danger 

 lest even this eloquent address may suggest that " pure science " 

 requires an apology — a heresy which Bacon long ago confuted in his 

 distinction between experiments which are " lucifera " and those which 

 are " fructifera " ? Is there not reason to recall his words : " Just as 

 the vision of light itself is something more excellent and beautiful than 

 its manifold uses, so without doubt the contemplation of things as they 

 are, without superstition or imposture, without error or confusion, is in 

 itself a nobler thing than the whole harvest of inventions " ? 



A Contribution to the Biology of Cock-Fighting. 



E. Bordage, who has previously made some interesting observations 

 on various cases of regeneration, has recently turned his scientific eye 

 upon cock-fighting. It is one of the pastimes of Eeunion, where the 

 pugnacity of the cocks is such that the premaxillae and the anterior 

 parts of the mandibles are sometimes torn away in the fury of combat. 

 1 — nat. sc. — vol. xiv. no. 83. 



