538 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



country, but also to encourage the people of other cities to do likewise. 

 There is not a place of 20,000 inhabitants in the country which should 

 not be able to support a scientific society, and, though time would be 

 required to accumulate such a library and such collections as those 

 owned by the Philadelphia Academy, still no one should be discouraged, 

 since no beginning could be more humble than the one we have de- 

 scribed. Science is becoming every day more prominent in our coun- 

 try, and our colleges are rapidly giving it that preference which has 

 been accorded to the dead languages in the past, and this is a change 

 for the better, for it is a fact that the American mind is a practical 

 one. The number of young men who attend our colleges to-day is 

 relatively smaller than it was a hundred years ago ; and even of col- 

 lege students a large proportion become farmers or physicians, or fol- 

 low mining, manufacturing, or mercantile pursuits, and to them science 

 is of far more practical value than the wars of Csesar or the " Birds " 

 of Aristophanes. The field of science is an expensive and difficult one 

 for the isolated student to explore. Specimens are requisite and books 

 are necessary, and these are most readily obtained by a co-operation 

 of all who are interested, and this very co-operation for this purpose 

 is the foundation of all scientific societies. 



-^*+~- 



A LITTLE MATTER 



By A. E. OUTEEBRIDGE, Je. 



THE original investigator in Nature's domains may not inaptly be 

 likened to a pioneer who penetrates the primeval forest, and by 

 the aid of his keen hatchet hews down the obstructions, marking 

 out first a narrow path in the wilderness until he reaches a favorable 

 camping-ground. He then clears a space, admitting sunlight and air ; 

 meanwhile, he is perhaps unconscious of, or indifferent to, the ap- 

 proaches of other adventurers, until, little by little, the clearings en- 

 croach upon each other ; cultivated fields, orchards, vineyards, and 

 gardens appear ; the face of the landscape changes, and its every 

 aspect becomes familiar, so that we cease to wonder at its sometimes 

 strange and novel features. 



This analogy is not a mere fancy ; all the advances in scientific 

 knowledge have been made in little detachments. Narrow lines of 

 investigation have been projected and explored by patient toilers who 

 dig out a few roots here and there, which are carefully garnered until 

 their genus can be determined by further study. In this way, sepa- 

 rate facts are being constantly stored up, to be collated and classified 

 at a proper time. 



The ideas which have prevailed in the past, in regard to the nature 



