532 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



given 21 titles, while the younger Kirch, the astronomer, has 37 titles. 

 Euler, in the quarter of a century he lived in Berlin and worked in the 

 academy, published in its transactions 121 complete treatises, through 

 other channels at least 700 more, and, in addition, was the author of 

 32 quarto and 13 octavo volumes. La Grange, his successor, the dis- 

 coverer of the calculus of variations, during the thirteen years of his 

 life in Berlin published 52 important treatises, about 100 pamphlets 

 and 10 large works. From 1746, when the era of publication really 

 began, to 1771, 25 volumes of 'Transactions' appeared and 65 volumes 

 of what are called historical writings. The publications were even 

 more important between 1771 and 1786. The income of the academy 

 at the death of the king was nearly $18,000, devoted, it was supposed, 

 entirely to the discovery and extension of knowledge, and yet, as a 

 matter of fact, expended to such an extent for buildings and the pay- 

 ment of salaries at the order of the king as to leave comparatively little 

 for the support of original investigators, or for costly experiment and 

 research. In fact the management of the academy, even under 

 Frederick the Great, was so unsatisfactory as to furnish excuse for the 

 formation of many learned societies in Berlin, in some of which mem- 

 bers of the academy took a leading part. Thus in the philosophical 

 society, which flourished from 1773 to 1798, men like Mendelssohn, 

 whom the king would not have in the academy, Nicolai, Teller and 

 Engel were prominent, and a society of naturalists was formed during 

 this period by the aid of Gleditsch, the botanist, one of the famous 

 men in the academy. Yet with all its failures, and the fact that it 

 was so completely under French influence, there can be no doubt that the 

 Prussian Academy of Science and Fine Arts at the death of Frederick 

 the Great had become the center of the scientific and critical movement 

 in Germany, and was regarded all over Europe as a worthy rival of 

 the Royal Society of Great Britain and of the French Academy in 

 Paris. 



