846 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



terious to those — and to-day they seem 

 to be the multitude — who look to the 

 Government and the Legislature for 

 their salvation in all things; but not 

 mysterious to those who believe that 

 the heaping of functions on the state 

 is the very canker-worm of liberty and 

 progress. 



THE CLEVELAND MEETING OF TEE 

 AMERICAN ASSOCIATION. 



TuE recent meeting of the Ameri- 

 can Association for the Advancement 

 of Science at Cleveland appears to have 

 been a very satisfactory one. Many 

 circumstances seem to have contrib- 

 uted to its success. The weather was 

 favorable. The members came pre- 

 pared with papers which were, for 

 the most part, either in their scientific 

 character or their practical bearing, 

 worthy of the name of the Association. 

 And the place of meeting was happily 

 chosen. It had been thirty-five years 

 since the Association met before in 

 Cleveland, and during the interval the 

 city had enjoyed a tenfold growth and 

 development, which, as President Staley 

 pointed out in his welcoming address, 

 Avas, to a large extent, owing to the 

 advance of science and its applications 

 in the arts and in manufactures. "It 

 would be difficult," the speaker ad- 

 ded, "to find a city in which a larger 

 proportion of the inhabitants are inter- 

 ested, directly or indirectly, in pursuits 

 which depend upon scientific methods 

 and processes." The people showed, 

 by their attendance upon the meetings, 

 by their treatment of the members of 

 the Association, and by the avidity with 

 which they read the unusually full 

 newspaper reports of the proceedings, 

 that they appreciated and enjoyed the 

 privilege of having such a body among 

 them. In these points they set an ex- 

 ample to some cities of much larger pro- 

 portions and pretensions. 



The wonderful achievements of sci- 

 ence, as illustrated by the work of the 

 Association, and the industrial develop- 



ment of Cleveland, were the theme of 

 President Staley's welcoming address. 

 The speaker happily illustrated these 

 wonders by introducing the figure of a 

 citizen of Cleveland, who, meeting in 

 the East a Persian story-teller of the 

 Arabian Nights pattern, should easily 

 defeat him in a game of capping stories 

 by simply relating what he saw actually 

 going on every day in the factories and 

 workshops of his native place. The 

 same topic was touched upon from an- 

 other direction in President Powell's 

 opening address, in which he indicated 

 tlie innumerable fields of research that 

 were represented in the membership of 

 the Association. 



The address of retiring President 

 Langley, which was made at the even- 

 ing session of the first day, was prob- 

 ably suggested by his own researches, 

 and bore upon the history of the doc- 

 trine of radiant energy ; while the speak- 

 er could not prognosticate the future of 

 this doctrine for any distance in ad- 

 vance, he suggested, as a problem await- 

 ing more immediate solution, the rela- 

 tion between temperature and radiation. 

 The vice-presidential addresses bore the 

 usual relations of such papers to the 

 special departments in which their sev- 

 eral sections were concerned. Prof. 

 Stone, in astronomy, discussed the con- 

 firmation which Newton's theory of 

 gravitation had received from studies in 

 that science. Prof. Michelson, in physics, 

 described his experiments to devise a 

 standard of measurement from light- 

 waves. Prof. Monroe explained what 

 light the investigation of chemical com- 

 pounds casts upon the doctrine of evolu- 

 tion. Prof. Cook, in geology, insisted 

 upon the indispensable importance of 

 American geology to the completeness of 

 the science, and to the construction of a 

 systematic and adequate nomenclature. 

 Prof. Eiley, in biology, who seems to 

 have been exceptionally happy in his 

 audience, traced the progress and estab- 

 lishment of the doctrine of evolution. 

 Dr. Abbott, in anthropology, reviewed 



