3 i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



along, daintily and grotesquely, in the pointed shoes of the four- 

 teenth century. 



I linger on this subject of colleges because the example of other 

 countries, and especially of Germany, proves to us that on them our 

 hopes for the development of science must very largely rest. The 

 scientific glory of Germany, not inferior in brilliancy to its military 

 glory, is the creation of its university professors. Among them we 

 find the great chemists and physicists, whose works we study with 

 delight. 



Our colleges must separate themselves from the mediaeval, and 

 assume thoroughly and sincerely the modern cast. Sincerely, I say, 

 for not a few of them indulge in deception. They would have us 

 believe that they teach physics when they have no modern appara- 

 tus ; chemistry, when they have no laboratory ; botany, without any 

 garden, herbarium, or even drawings ; geology, mineralogy, natural 

 history, without any cabinets. So ignorant are some boards of trus- 

 tees and faculties, that they hold such equipments as luxuries easily 

 dispensed with. I have known some go so far as to affirm that as 

 much money ought to be expended in teaching a few boys Latin 

 and Greek as in giving a demonstrative and illustrated course of sci- 

 ence, and even to act on that principle. In institutions under this 

 kind of influence, you will always find that their whole weight is 

 thrown toward the aesthetic. Whatever college honors there may be, 

 whatever emoluments, pass in that direction ; and, though through fear 

 of public opinion science cannot be ignored, it is simply tolerated, not 

 cultivated. 



From our colleges we may in the second place turn to our scientific 

 societies. 



I have referred to the period at which the Greek language be- 

 came cultivated in Western Europe. The first societies were those 

 established in Florence by its admirers. In the Medicean gardens the 

 lovers of Plato assembled to restore, under an Italian sky, the phi- 

 losophy that had been extinguished in Athens, and to commemorate 

 by a symposium the birthday of that illustrious man. There is a 

 pleasure in associating with those whose thoughts are congenial to 

 our own, in breathing an atmosphere in which the intellectual makes 

 itself felt. 



Very soon the example was imitated. Persons who had a love for 

 science followed the example of those who had a love for letters. 

 The Accidentia Secretorum Naturce was instituted at Naples in 1560, 

 by Baptista Porta, the inventor of the camera which photographers 

 now so much use ; the Lyncean Academy for the Promotion of Nat- 

 ural Philosophy, in 1603 ; the Royal Society of London, 1645 ; the 

 Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris, 1666 ; the Berlin Academy of 

 Arts and Sciences, in 1700. Leibnitz, the rival of Newton, was its 

 first president. 



