514 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



periments have been made on a large scale which seem fairly definite 

 even thougli quantitative results can not at present be reached. The 

 mulattoes may be assumed to have a heredity midway between negroes 

 and whites, but their social environment is that of the negroes, and 

 their performance corresponds with their social environment rather 

 than with their heredity. Illegitimate children have perhaps a heredity 

 as good as the average, but their performance falls far below the aver- 

 age. If performance were determined by heredity alone there might be 

 expected to be among our thousand leading scientific men some forty 

 mulattoes and some forty of illegitimate birth, whereas there is probably 

 not one of either class. 



At nearly the same time Agassiz came from abroad to Harvard and 

 Briinnow to Michigan. We all know the list of distinguished natural- 

 ists trained under Agassiz — Brooks, Hyatt, Jordan, Lyman, Minot, 

 Morse, Packard, Putnam, Scudder, Shaler, Verrill, Whitman, Wilder 

 and many more, directly and indirectly. From Michigan have come, 

 as is not so well known, one fourth of our most distinguished astron- 

 omers, including Abbe, Campbell, Comstock, Curtis, Doolittle, Hall, 

 Hussey, Klotz, Leuschner, Payne, Schaeberle, AVatson and Woodward. 

 Certainly the coming of Agassiz and Briinnow was the real cause of 

 greatly increased scientific productivity in America. Some, but not 

 all, of those who worked under Agassiz would have become naturalists 

 apart from his influence. The astronomers from Michigan must in the 

 main be attributed to their environment. The men had the necessary 

 ability, but if Briinnow had not gone to Michigan, they would not have 

 become astronomers; if they had gone to the University of Pennsyl- 

 vania, they would have been more likely to have become physicians than 

 astronomers ; if they had not gone to a university they would not have 

 become scientific men. 



It is certainly satisfactory if we can attribute the inferiority of 

 scientific performance in America as compared with Germany, France 

 and Great Britain to lack of opportunity rather than to lesser racial 

 ability. In Germany scientific research has been made by the univer- 

 sity rather than the reverse. In Great Britain also the universities 

 have been potent, and, in addition, its leisure class has contributed 

 greatly. Here prior to 1876 we had no university in which research 

 work was adequately encouraged, and we have had no amateurs com- 

 parable to those of Great Britain. Professor Pickering found^' that of 

 the 87 scientific men who were members of at least two foreign acad- 

 emies, 6 were Americans as compared with 17 from Prussia, 13 from 

 England and 12 from France. In so far as our scientific production is 

 60 measured, the reference is to a generation ago, when our universities 

 were only beginning to develop and research work was only beginning 

 to be appreciated. But it is a striking fact that of the six distinguished 

 8 The Popular Science Monthly, October, 3 908, and January, 1909. 



