202 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



an ounce, much as it speaks of Mrs. X's hundred-thousand-dollar tiara, 

 or Raphael's million-dollar Sistine Madonna. With equal interest it 

 reads of the production of energy out of nothing, of communication 

 with the dead, or the discovery of the origin of life. America is, as 

 we know„ the favorite resort of new religions, intellectual fads, and 

 isms, ologies and pathies of every sort. As a symptom of the attitude 

 of the public toward science I may mention the fact that the press does 

 not yet consider scientific news to be good business. While every paper 

 of metropolitan standing maintains an expert for literature, for the 

 drama, for music, and many for sport, I know of but three, the New 

 York Sun, the Evening Post, and the Boston Transcript, that retain the 

 services of a regular contributor to acquaint the public with the current 

 achievements of science. I have for years taken one of the great 

 Boston dailies, but I find it almost impossible to find from it who has 

 obtained the Nobel prizes, and I take it as extremely likely that the 

 rest of the public is in the same position, for many had never heard 

 of these prizes until one of them was conferred on the president of 

 the United States. Do not the facts that I have mentioned lead us 

 to the necessary conclusion that on the American field there is no great 

 depth of earth, and point emphatically to the need of both deepening 

 the soil and fertilizing it ? When we come to sum up the achievement 

 of this country in science we find ourselves somewhat embarrassed. 

 There are in the dictionary of scientists recently published by Professor 

 Cattell the names of about four thousand men who have been engaged 

 more or less in research, that is, one man in every twenty thousand of 

 the population of the country. Does this look as if the prosecution of 

 science was looked upon as of great national import? Of those who 

 have received the honor here most coveted by scientific men, of election 

 into the National Academy of Sciences, we find ninety, or a little more 

 than one man in each million of the population. Either this body is 

 absurdly limited, or science can hardly be said to be flourishing here. 

 What is the product of these four thousand scientists? I will grant 

 that much of it is of an excellent order, that we have many flourishing 

 scientific societies, and that in many sciences we maintain our own 

 journals which are to be found in every scientific library in the world. 

 But nevertheless it is plain that so far few fundamental discoveries are 

 made here, that we neither discover radium, split up the atom, nor find 

 new gases in the air. The Nobel prizes have not yet crossed the 

 water, nor do they seem particularly likely to in the next few years. 

 In fact we find ourselves in much the same state with regard to science 

 as with art and literature. We have our Sargent and St. Gaudens, our 

 Howells and James, we have also our Michelson and Morley, our 

 Newcomb, Hill and Agassiz, and a good many others of varying degrees 

 of prominence, but not of commanding rank. It seems accordingly 



