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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



increased in volume as to compel 

 removal to more commodious quar- 

 ters. Ten years of growth and 

 iminterrupted prosperity followed, 

 when Mr. Daniel Appleton, in 1848, 

 retired from the now well-estab- 

 lished firm, William H. Appleton, 

 at the age of thirty-four, becoming 

 its head, with his brothers John A. 

 and Daniel Sidney as partners. In 

 co-operation with these and other 

 brothers who afterward entered the 

 business, Mr. Appleton guided the 

 operations of the firm for a period 

 of nearly fifty years, successfully 

 piloting it through several financial 

 crises and carrying it to a foremost 

 place among the publishing houses 

 of America. 



Besides the routine of an exten- 

 sive publishing business, the history 

 of the house during this time in- 

 cludes a number of large undertak- 

 ings involving the expenditure of 

 vast sums of money, and years of 

 labor by many workers, and attended 

 with risks that only the most far- 

 seeing business sagacity could jus- 

 tify. We may presume that the sev- 

 eral members of the firm shared a 

 common faith in the success of these 

 great enterprises, but it is fair to 

 infer that as the head of the house 

 William II. Appleton took a leading 

 part in their origin and execution. 

 One of these ventures was the pub- 

 lication of the American Cyclo- 

 pajdia, which in its present revised 

 form represents an outlay of over a 

 million dollars and some ten years 

 of time. Another undertaking, and 

 the one that we wish more particu- 

 larly to speak of here, was the ex- 

 tension of the business in the line 

 of popular scientific publications. 



Scientific circles in this country 

 have never realized the debt they 

 owe to D. Appleton and Company, 

 and especially to William H. Ap- 

 pleton, in this regard. It is no ex- 

 aggeration to say that the advance 

 of science in the United States was 

 hastened by more than a quarter of I 



a century by the enlightened and 

 courageous policy which led the firm 

 to add this class of books to their 

 lists at the time they did. Every- 

 thing apparently was against it — 

 nothing in its favor. Our scientific 

 literature consisted mainly of a few 

 text-books having only a limited 

 sale. Science itself was an affair of 

 laboratories and bug collectors, the 

 one to be shunned and the other 

 commiserated. The few utterances 

 of scientific men having a bearing 

 on the great questions of the right 

 interpretation of Nature, man's re- 

 lations to his fellows and to the 

 world at large, social betterment, 

 etc., that here and there arrested 

 public attention were received with 

 contemptuous sneers or scouted as 

 the rankest infidelity. Few who are 

 not past middle life will find it pos- 

 sible now to realize that this was 

 the general attitude toward science 

 forty years ago, but we have only to 

 refer the reader to the writings of 

 the time for abundant confirmation 

 of our statements. 



It was such conditions as these 

 that the firm was called upon to face 

 when considering the question of 

 entering this new field of publica- 

 tion. All ordinary business instincts 

 were against it. Scarcely a pub- 

 lisher either here or abroad would 

 even listen to the proposal to risk 

 his capital in such an enterprise. 

 Nevertheless, Mr. Appleton, lending 

 an appreciative ear to the argu- 

 ments of the former editor of this 

 journal and displaying his usual 

 foresight, finally decided in favor 

 of the project, .which afterward re- 

 sulted in the introduction of the 

 works of Spencer, Darwin, Huxley, 

 Tyndall, Bain, Romanes, and other 

 distinguished writers to American 

 readers. A further step in the same 

 direction, taken later, was the pub- 

 lication of the International Scien- 

 tific Series, now numbering some 

 eighty volumes. The scheme as 

 originated and shaped by Professor 



