314 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



In all directions there is good hope for the future. Perhaps, then, 

 you will listen without impatience for a few minutes this evening to 

 one of the laborers who has taken part in the toil of the generation 

 now finishing its work, who looks back, not without a seutiment of 

 pride, on what that generation has done, who points out to you the 

 duties and rewards that are awaiting you, and welcomes you to your 

 task. Let us look at the prospect before us. 



The progress of science among us very largely depends on two 

 elements : hirst, on our educational establishments ; second, on our 

 scientific societies. To each of these I propose to direct your atten- 

 tion ; and, first, of our colleges : 



Prof. Silliman, in his address delivered on the occasion of the cen- 

 tennial of chemistry, at the grave of Priestley, in commemoration of 

 the discovery of oxygen, makes this remark : "The year 1845 marks 

 the beginning: of a new era in the scientific life of America, which is 

 still in active progress, and chemistry has had its full share in this 

 advance." He then enumerates the causes which, in his opinion, had 

 brought about this increased activity. Among them are the centen- 

 nial celebration of the American Philosophical Society, in Philadel- 

 phia, in 1843; the reorganization of the United States Coast Survey, 

 in 1845; the establishment of the Smithsonian Institution at Wash- 

 ington, in 1846; the enlargement of the American Journal of Sci- 

 ence, in the same year; the contemporaneous foundation of the Astro- 

 nomical Observatory at Cincinnati ; the institution of the Analytical 

 Laboratory at Yale College, in 1847; and, simultaneously, the Law- 

 rence Scientific School at Harvard. To these he adds especially the 

 establishment of the American Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, in 1848. Coinciding with him fully as to the character and 

 power of these and other local causes which he mentions, I cannot but 

 regard them as being themselves the issues of influences of a much 

 more general kind. 



A revolution had been taking place in Europe a revolution not 

 so much political as industrial or social, though it was followed by 

 political consequences of the most important nature. Its commence- 

 ments may be seen in the preceding century, in the canal-engineering 

 of Brindley; in the improvements of iron-manufacture; in the con- 

 struction of all kinds of machinery, which reached its acme when the 

 hand of man was deposed from its office, and, through the slide-rest 

 and planing-machine, engines were made by themselves. Then came 

 the exquisite contrivances for the manufacture of textile fabrics, so 

 that a man could do as much work in a day as he had formerly done 

 in a year, the movement in that direction culminating in the two 

 steam-engines, the condenser and non-condenser. The demand for 

 cotton rose ; the value of the slave, its cultivator, was enhanced ; and 

 the negro question became the paramount political question in the 

 United States. See how scientific discoveries and inventions lead to 



