EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



Vol. X. No. 6. 



Among the many important services which the late Senator Jnstin S. 

 Morrill rendered to his country during his long and honorable career 

 as a member of Congress none so justly entitle him to lasting remem- 

 brance as a benefactor of mankind as those by which he became a 

 potent factor in the advancement of science and education in every 

 State and Territory of the Union. Growing up under the thoroughly 

 democratic conditions existing in rural New England in the earlier half 

 of this century, and coming to Congress in the prime of life after a 

 successful experience as a business man and a farmer, his mind opened 

 readily to receive the new ideas regarding education in the arts and 

 sciences which were then being actively discussed by the leaders of 

 public opinion in this country and abroad. The conditions which gave 

 rise to this agitation have been thus described by Prof. W. H. Brewer, 

 who has himself been closely identified with the great movement in 

 which Senator Morrill performed such distinguished services : 



"The period between 1840 and 1860 was a peculiar one in the history 

 of the world's intellectual activity and material progress. At its 

 beginning some of the physical sciences, more particularly chemistry 

 and geology, were scarcely 50 years old, but they had already revolu- 

 tionized some of the arts and produced great changes in agriculture. 

 All this had taken place within the lifetime of the older workers then 

 in the field. Popular works on science were widely read, and had pre- 

 pared the public mind to cherish hopes, perhaps exaggerated, of the 

 benefits to come by the applications of science, and had greatly stimu- 

 lated intellectual activity in this new field of knowledge. . . . 



"In a thousand and one ways, more in the other lines than in agri- 

 culture, discovery, invention, and the application of scientific laws to the 

 arts and industries were playing a part in the development of the mate- 

 rial resources of the civilized world and modifying the industries and 

 occupations of men. There was then an absorbing interest in the grow- 

 ing steam transportation ; railroads and ocean steamships then came into 

 use and were made practicable ; iron working, dyeing, and many other 

 arts were being revolutionized by chemistry ; commercial fertilizers were 

 coming to be used; the electric telegraph, just invented, first came 

 into use during this period ; other events, some of them political, were 



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