Milestones 35 



ponderance of good ; but their direct influence upon human charac- 

 ter and happiness is not large. The reduction in size of our earth, 

 our country, or our town, which railways, telegraphs, and telephones 

 have brought about is in itself no satisfaction. Rapid locomotion is 

 not an object in itself. Does the average man get any more happi- 

 ness out of his little span than he did one hundred years ago? or does 

 he have a longer span ? And if he does, have the inventions of the 

 past century in mechanics and physics been a direct cause of the 

 improvement? The answers to these questions are not ready and 

 clear. We hesitate to give an affirmative reply. The fact is that me- 

 chanics and physics deal only indirectly with human misery — 

 namely, climatic influences, not understood, and, therefore, not to 

 be guarded against, violent and unpredictable extremes of heat or 

 cold, wetness or dryness, ravages of noxious plants and animals, 

 diseases both of men and of useful animals, and untimely deaths. 

 All these evils belong to the domain of Natural History, and for 

 ultimate deliverance from them we must look to the student of 

 Natural Science . . . 



Can we not clearly foresee that by the patient, thorough, cumu- 

 lative study of Natural History in all its branches, men will gradu- 

 ally arrive at a knowledge of plants and animals, and of the favor- 

 able and unfavorable conditions of life for all plants and animals, 

 which will give them control over many evils which they now find 

 wholly mysterious and irresistible? . . . 



Antiquity had its great students of nature, but they lacked the 

 means of diffusing, preserving, and accumulating their discoveries. 

 The past four centuries have had abundant means of recording and 

 transmitting from one generation to another all the scientific truth 

 which they became possessed of. It is in this steady, patient and 

 orderly accumulation of facts concerning living things that the hope 



