APPLETONS' 



POPULAR SCIENCE 



MONTHLY, 



PROSPECTUS FOR 1900. 



FOR a magazine whose field has no limitations except those of science, it is quite impossible 

 to make a comprehensive announcement of its contents a year ahead. The Popular 

 Science Monthly aims to keep its readers in touch with the most recent advances and dis- 

 coveries as they are applicable to the promotion of human welfare and social progress. We 

 believe that science is the force which has done the most in this direction in the past, and that 

 it is what we must look to for growth in the future. We take advantage of every opportunity to 

 secure articles that shall be entertaining as well as instructive without sacrificing accuracy, and 

 we especially seek those authors who have the ability to write upon scientific subjects in a clear 

 and instructive way. 



The most characteristic feat..re of the nineteenth century, and especially of its latter half, 

 is the truly wonderful advance of science, both -theoretical and practical. Coincident with 

 this advance, and xtry largely dependent upon it, has been the unprecedented development 

 of commerce and manufactures, of social organization and national wealth. A comparison of 

 the potentiality of an unskilled laborer of one hundred years ago with that of a like workman of 

 to-day brings out most strikingly what this scientific advance has accomplished in solving the 

 problems of life and raising the standard of comfort ; so that the luxuries of a few years ago are 

 the necessities of to-day, and new pleasures have been added and even become common which 

 were formerly beyond the reach of the most wealthy. In view, then, of this prominently 

 scientific aspect, the most important and instructive portion of nineteenth-century history will be 

 that of its scientific achievements, which, as Mr. Alfred Russel W^allace has so well pointed out 

 in his " Wonderful Century," far exceed in number as well as in importance those of all the 

 centuries that have preceded it. 



A CENTURY OF SCIENCE. 



Believing that no more appropriate and useful way of signalizing the completion of this cen- 

 tury could be adopted than that of publishing during its closing year a history of its scientific 

 work, we have arranged for such a series of articles from the leading scientific writers of the 

 World: Sir Robert S. Ball in Astronomy; President Arthur T. Hadley in Economics; Prof. 

 Joseph Le Conte in Geology; the Hon. Andrew D. White in University Education ; Prof. W. M. 

 Flinders Petrie in Archaeology ; M. W. Haffkine in Preventive Inoculation ; Prof. W. M. Davis in 

 Meteorology ; Prof. F. W. Clarke in Chemistry ; and others of like standing in their specialties. 



NEW DISCOVERIES AND INVENTIONS, 



The Monthly will continue to give accounts of the course of discovery and of new develop- 

 ments in pure science; and careful writers familiar with their subjects will be engaged to 

 describe whatever occurs in this field as soon as it has assumed definite form. Recognizing 

 that the highest service that can be rendered by knowledge is in its use for the improvement of 

 man's condition, special attention will be given to the adaptations of discovery to practical ends 

 in the arts and industries, in the betterment of social life, and in the development of a wiser 

 statesmanship for the administration of civil affairs. 

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