ON THE PROGRESS OP SCIENCE. 7 







has been dispelled by a recent announcement that the King of Den- 

 mark has resolved to maintain the Altona Observatory in connection 

 with that of the editorship of this work. 



Generally, it may be said of Astronomy, at the present time, that it 

 is prosecuted zealously and extensively, active observations being now 

 more numerous than ever, and that the interests of the science are 

 promoted as well by private enterprise -as by the aid of government. 



In regard to the progress of the departments of geography and 

 ethnography, Lord Harrowby remarks : " The great navigations which 

 are opening up the heart of the South American continent, by the 

 Paraguay, the Amazons, and the Orinoco ; that are traversing and 

 uniting the colonies of Victoria and South Australia by the River 

 Murray; the projected exploration of North Australia ; the wonderful 

 discoveries in South Africa by Livingston and Anderson; and the ex- 

 plorations of Central Africa by Barth and Vogel ; the pictures given 

 us by Capt. Erskine and others of the condition of the islanders of the 

 South Pacific, passing in every stage of transition from the lowest 

 barbarism to a fitness for the highest European and Christian culture ; 

 these, and a hundred other topics, awaken an ever-new interest in the 

 mind of the philosopher and statesman, in the feelings of the Chris- 

 tian arid the lover of his kind. What new fields for science ! What 

 new opportunities for wealth and power ! What new openings for good ! 



" It is happily becoming every year less and less necessary to press 

 these things on public notice. In an age of gas and steam of steam- 

 engines and steamboats of railroads and telegraphs, and photographs 

 the importance of science is no longer questioned. It is a truism 

 a commonplace. We are far from the foundation days of the Royal 

 Society, when, in spite of the example of the monarch, their proceed- 

 ings were the ridicule of the court; and even the immortal Butler 

 thought the labors of a Wallis, a Sydenham, a Harvey, a Hooke, or a 

 Newton, fit subjects for his wit." 



The noble lord glanced cheeringly at the increasing facilities for 

 education in science which are being opened up in this country. " The 

 encouragements and assistance already given (he said) by the State to 

 the education of the people in various shapes ; the superior class of 

 trained and examined teachers who are spreading over the land, and 

 whose training has in no small degree been in physical science ; the 

 books provided for early education by our societies and by individual 

 enterprise, having the same character ; the every-day more and more 

 acknowledged connection between agriculture and science, showing 

 itself in such papers as enrich the pages of the journals of the Royal 

 Agricultural Society ; the establishment of the department of science 

 with its school of mines under the Board of Trade ; the improvement ' 



