240 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to make them in the highest degree 

 instructive. Why should the United 

 States not join in this generous rivalry, 

 and make an International Exposition 

 the chief feature of its Centennial Cele- 

 hration? A project of this kind has 

 heen ably devised and thoroughly ma- 

 tured; it is to be hoped that a people 

 so full of great things will not break 

 down in its execution under such mem- 

 orable circumstances, and especially 

 after the enterprise has gone so far as 

 to implicate the national honor. 



A CHEMICAL CENTENNIAL. 



AxD, as centennials are now in or- 

 der, we are happy to see that there is 

 beginning to be a stir in behalf of a 

 Scientific Centennial Celebration for 

 the present year. Dr. H. Carrington 

 Bolton, of the School of Mines in Co- 

 lumbia College, has written a letter to 

 the American CJiemist, stating that the 

 year 1774 was so memorable for the 

 number and importance of its chemical 

 discoveries, that it may with good rea- 

 son be regarded as the birth-year of 

 the science. It was in that year, he 

 states, that the Swedish chemist Scheele 

 first isolated chlorine and threw im- 

 portant light upon baryta and manga- 

 nese. Lavoisier's experiments upon 

 tin, which led to subsequent discoveries 

 of immense importance, were made also 

 in that year. Dr. Bolton says : " Wieg- 

 leb proved alkalies to be true, natural 

 constituents of plants. Cadet described 

 an improved method of preparing sul- 

 phuric ether. Bergman showed the 

 presence of carbonic acid in lead white. 

 On the 27th of September in this year 

 Comus reduced the ' calces ' of the six 

 metals, by means of the electric spark, 

 before an astonished and delighted au- 

 dience of savants. On the 1st of Au- 

 gust, 1774, Priestley discovered oxygen, 

 the immediate results of which were 

 the overthrow of the time -honored 

 phlogistic theory and the foundation 

 of chemistry on its present basis. It 



surely requires no lengthy argument to 

 prove that the year 1774 may well be 

 considered as the starting-point of mod- 

 ern chemistry." 



In commemoration of these discov- 

 eries, Dr. Bojton suggests that "some 

 public recognition of this fact should be 

 made this coming summer. Would it 

 not be an agreeable event if American 

 chemists should meet on the 1st day of 

 August, 1874, at some pleasant water- 

 ing-place, to discuss chemical questions, 

 especially the wonderfully rapid prog- 

 ress of chemical science in the past 

 hundred years? " 



We think this suggestion excellent, 

 and hope it will be carried out. Fortu- 

 nately the date is favorable, as it oc- 

 curs in the season of general vacation. 

 We suggested some time ago that such 

 a centennial as this ought to be cele- 

 brated ; and, as the great discoverer of 

 oxygen was exiled to this country by 

 foreign intolerance, and died here, we 

 proposed to erect a statue to him in the 

 Central Park. But monuments to sci- 

 entific men are not yet much in favor. 

 They erected one to Dr. Jenner, the 

 discoverer of vaccination, in Trafalgar 

 Square, London ; but the jDlace was 

 wanted for a military hero, and so the 

 Jenner statue was carted away to an 

 obscure place in Kensington, and plant- 

 ed down by the public water-filters. 

 He, whose discovery had saved more 

 lives annually than the collective ar- 

 mies of Europe could destroy, if all put 

 at their business, had to give place to 

 one who had signalized himself in a 

 small w^ay, in the work of destroying 

 his kind. Let the chemists meet and 

 celebrate the birth and growth of their 

 science; perhaps in another hundred 

 years the turn of the discoverers will 

 come. 



'' BESPGNSIBILITT IN MENTAL 

 DISEASE.'' 



Whatevee may be said about the 

 futility of "theories" and the impor- 

 tance of "facts," it is certain that we 



