METEORITES, METEORS, AND SHOOTING-STARS. 733 



accumulation of large quantities of wealth in single hands ; while such 

 accumulation has not only been indispensable, as it still is, in develop- 

 ing our country, and an indispensable reward of enterprise, but, even 

 leaving this out of account, is for the greatest good of the greatest num- 

 ber because it best preserves capital and employs labor most produc- 

 tively. We may say that public opinion favors interference with the 

 natural ratios of distribution, as may be seen by usury laws, exemption 

 laws, laws abridging freedom of contract, river and harbor bills, laws 

 imposing heavy taxes on corporations, and so forth ; while in general 

 the natural ratios are the best for the public interest. Only the most 

 immediate considerations are generally weighed ; and unjust laws, like 

 the Potter railroad law of Wisconsin, have to result in manifest public 

 damage before they are repealed. It can hardly be doubted that before 

 the late war, when the Jeffersonian maxims in regard to legislation 

 still held sway, our political development was higher than it has been 

 since ; and the same may be said of our general ideas on public policy. 

 But unceasing education in business methods of thinking are plainly 

 forcing public opinion in the right direction, as was proved by the 

 tone of the public press regarding the recent strike on the Missouri 

 Pacific, and by the strong attacks lately made on the Blair educa- 

 tion bill. Meanwhile there will be much of what might be called un- 

 necessary blundering and suffering ; but in reality this will be neces- 

 sary to develop the needed habits and ideas. 







METEOE1TES, METEOKS, AND SHOOTING-STAKS * 



Br HUBERT A. NEWTON, LL. D., 



PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS IN YALE COLLEGE. 



YOU are kindly giving to me an hour to-night in which I may 

 speak to you. I do not have enough confidence in myself to 

 justify me in speaking to such an audience as this upon one of those 

 broad subjects that belong equally to all sections of the Association. 

 The progress, the encouragements, and the difficulties in each field are 

 best known to the workers in the field, and I should do you little 

 good by trying to sum up and recount them. Let me rather err, then, 

 if at all, by going to the opposite extreme. 



Two years ago your distinguished president instructed and de- 

 lighted us all by speaking of the pending problems of astronomy, 

 what they are, and what hopes we have of solving them. To one sub- 

 ject in this one science, a subject so subordinate that he very properly 

 gave it only brief notice, I ask your attention. I propose to state 

 some propositions which we may believe to be probably true about 

 the meteorites, the meteors, and the shooting-stars. 



* Address of the retiring President of the American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science, delivered at Buffalo, August 19, 1886. 



