26o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



no comnmnity can succeed in which the drones and the workers 

 have equal access to the honey cells. 



But though the project at New Harmony, judged by the meas- 

 ure of its founder's purposes, was a failure, still the influence for 

 good of the men who, as a result of the experiment, became part 

 of the life of the infant State of Indiana, is incalculable. New 

 Harmony was located far in the backwoods, in the long- despised 

 county of Posey, but for a time it was truly the center of Ameri- 

 can science, and to this day few names in the annals of our 

 science are brighter than those of Le Sueur, Say, and the Owens. 



To gain a just appreciation of the scientific career of Richard 

 Owen we must consider for a moment the lives of the men of 

 science whose dreams and projects he shared, and who were the 

 companions of his youth. It was through the agency of William 

 Maclure that most of these were drawn to New Harmony. Mac- 

 lure was a geologist of note and an earnest student of social 

 science. On leaving Philadelphia he planned to conduct at New 

 Harmony a school of industry where the arts of the conquest of 

 Nature should be taught to all. The essence of human progress, 

 in his thought, was the increase of human knowledge. The 

 farmer should cease to be a mere tiller of the soil, and should be 

 trained to make the earth his benefactor. A man is better unborn 

 than untrained. An unskilled laborer is a deformity, and they 

 who toil should do so to the best advantage. 



William Maclure published fortnightly at New Harmony a 

 magazine called The Disseminator of Useful Knowledge, contain- 

 ing Hints to the Youth of the United States, from the School of 

 Industry. Its motto was, " Ignorance is the frightful cause of 

 human misery." Its subscription price was one dollar a year in 

 advance. 



This magazine was filled with wise reflections on social and 

 political matters, having for lighter reading scraps of science and 

 bits of useful information of every sort. 



In the pages of the Disseminator the name of Thomas Say 

 often appears. Say wrote on the shells of the Wabash. He fol- 

 lowed Maclure from Philadelphia, and came down from Pittsburg 

 in a keel boat, along with the notable company famous in the 

 New Harmony Community as the " boat-load of knowledge." 



Thomas Say had been with Long's expedition across the Rocky 

 Mountains, and had already won fame as a naturalist and traveler. 

 His papers on shells and insects were widely known. These in- 

 vestigations he continued at New Harmony. A close and con- 

 scientious observer, his work bears the stamp of a master mind. 

 At his death in 1835 it was asserted that " he had done more to 

 make known the zoology of this country than any other man." 

 With a touch of his own modesty, one of his friends said that 



