7 68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



are far more competent to discuss them than I am. But the laborers in 

 the field are all too few, and the reasons therefor are not far to seek. 

 One of these undoubtedly is the high scientific attainment necessary 

 to a successful prosecution of this kind of investigation. The physi- 

 ological student must be a physicist, a chemist, an anatomist, and a 

 physiologist, all at once. Again, the course of instruction of those 

 who might fairly be expected to enter upon this work, the medical 

 students of the country, is directed toward making them practitioners 

 rather than investigators. In the third place, the importance of physi- 

 ological studies in connection with zoological research is only begin- 

 ning in this country to receive the share of attention it deserves. I 

 well remember the gratification I experienced in 1873 upon receiving 

 a letter from Professor Louis Agassiz, asking me to give some lectures 

 at Penikese upon physiological chemistry a new departure for those 

 times. In this view of the case it seems very appropriate that a new 

 subsection of this Association should be just now in process of forma- 

 tion. We welcome warmly the body of men who form it, and we pre- 

 dict that from the new subsection of Anatomy and Physiology most 

 valuable contributions will be received for our proceedings. 



It is a beautiful conception of science which regards the energy 

 which is manifested on the earth as having its origin in the sun. Pulsat- 

 ing awhile in the ether-molecules which fill the intervening space, this 

 motion reaches our earth and communicates its tremor to the mole- 

 cules of its matter. Instantly all starts into life. The winds move, 

 the waters rise and fall, the lightnings flash, and the thunders roll, all 

 as subdivisions of this received power. The muscle of the fleeing 

 animal transforms it in escaping from the hunter who seeks to use it 

 for the purpose of his destruction. The wave that runs along that 

 tiny nerve-thread to apprise us of danger transmutes it, and the return 

 pulse that removes us from its presence is a portion of it. The groan 

 of the weary, the shriek of the tortured, the voiced agony of the babe- 

 less mother, all borrow their significance from the same source. The 

 magnificence of the work of a Leonardo da Vinci or a Michael An- 

 gelo ; the divine creations of a Beethoven or of a Mozart ; the im- 

 mortal "Principia" of a Newton, and the "Mecanique Celeste" of a 

 Laplace all had their existence at some point of time in oscillations 

 of ether in the intersolar space. But all this energy is only a transi- 

 tory possession. As the sunlight gilds the mountain-top and then 

 glances off again into space, so this energy touches upon and beauti- 

 fies our earth and then speeds on its way. What other worlds it 

 reaches and vivifies we may never know. Beyond the veil of the seen, 

 Science may not penetrate. But Religion, more hopeful, seeks there 

 for the new heavens and the new earth, wherein shall be solved the 

 problems of a higher life. 



