DROWNING THE TORRENT IN VEGETATION. 6j 



is called " practical life," and so is worth something to the community 

 in dollars and cents : its commercial value is — just what it is — to he 

 accepted gratefully. Indirectly, however, almost all scientific truth 

 has real commercial value, because " knowledge is power," and because 

 (I quote it not irreverently) " the truth shall make y/)U free " — any 

 truth, and to some extent ; that is to say, the intelligent and intellect- 

 ually cultivated will generally obtain a more comfortable livelihood, 

 and do it more easily, than the stupid and the ignorant. Intelligence 

 and brains are most powerful allies of strength and hands in the strug- 

 gle for existence ; and so, on purely economical grounds, all kinds of 

 science are worthy of cultivation. 



But I should be ashamed to rest on this lower ground : the highest 

 value of scientific truth is not economic, but different and more noble ; 

 and, to a certain and great degree, its truest worth is more as an ob- 

 ject of pursuit than of possession. The " practical life " — the eating 

 and the drinking, the clothing and the sheltering — comes first, of 

 course, and is the necessary foundation of anything higher ; but it is 

 not the whole or the most or the best of life. Apart from all spiritual 

 and religious considerations, which lie one side of our relations in this 

 Association, there can be no need, before this audience, to plead the 

 higher rank of the intellectual, aesthetic, and moral life above the ma- 

 terial, or to argue that the pabulum of the mind is worth as much as 

 food for the body. Noav, I safely assert that, in the investigation 

 and discovery of the secrets and mysteries of the heavens, the human 

 intellect finds most invigorating exercise, and most nourishing and 

 growth-making aliment. No other scientific facts and conceptions are 

 more effective in producing a modest, sober, truthful, and ennobling 

 estimate of man's just place in nature, both of his puny insignificance, 

 regarded as a physical object, and his towering spirit, in some sense 

 comprehending the universe itself, and so akin to the divine. A na- 

 tion or an individual oppressed by poverty, and near to starving, needs 

 first, most certainly, the trades and occupations which will provide food 

 and clothing. When bodily comfort has been achieved, then higher 

 needs and wants appear ; and then science, for truth's own sake, comes 

 to be loved and honored along with poetry and art, leading into a 

 larger, higher, and nobler life. 



DEOWNING THE TOERENT IN YEGETATION. 



By S. W. POWELL. 



THE extraordinarily disastrous floods of 1883-'84, in the Ohio 

 River, have again called public attention to the close relation 

 which the wooded or unwooded condition of steep hill-sides, in the 

 areas drained by streams, bears to the volume of water flowing in them. 



