38 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



railways from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Pacific Ocean, so that 

 the fertile lauds of Ontario, Manitoba, Columbia, and the Korthwest- 

 eru Territories will soon be available to the world. Still, practical 

 science has much to accomplish. England and France, with only one 

 fifth the fertile area of Canada, support eighty million peoi)le, while 

 Canada has a population not exceeding five million. 



A less far-seeing people than the Canadians might have invited the 

 applied science which they so much require. But they knew that 

 without science there are no applications. They no doubt felt with 



Emerson — 



" And what if Trade sow cities 

 Like shells along the shore, 

 And thatch with towns the prairie broad 

 With railways ironed o'er; 

 They are but sailing foam-bells 

 Along Thought's causing stream, 

 And take their shape and sun-color 

 From him that sends the dream." 



So it was with a far-reaching foresight that the Canadian Government 

 invited the British Association for the Advancement of Science to 

 meet in Montreal. The inhabitants of Canada received us with open 

 arms, and the science of the Dominion and that of the United King- 

 dom w'cre welded. We found in Canada, as we had every reason to 

 expect, men of manly and self-reliant character, who loved not less 

 than we did the old home from which they had come. Among them 

 is the same healthiness of political and moral life, with the same love 

 of truth which distinguishes the English people. Our great men are 

 their great men ; our Shakespeare, Milton, and Burns belong to them 

 as much as to ourselves ; our Newton, Dalton, Faraday, and Darwin 

 are their men of science as much as they are ours. Thus a common 

 possession and mutual sympathy made the meeting in Canada a suc- 

 cessful effort to stimulate the progress of science, while it established, 

 at the same time, the principle that all people of British origin — and 

 I would fain include our cousins in the United States — possess a com- 

 mon interest in the intellectual glories of their race, and ought, in 

 science at least, to constitute part and parcel of a common empire, 

 whose heart may beat in the small islands of the Korthcrn seas, but 

 whose blood circulates in all her limbs, carrying warmth to them, and 

 bringing back vigor to us. Nothing can be more cheering to our as- 

 sociation than to know that many of the young communities of Eng- 

 lish-speaking people all over the globe — in India, China, Japan, the 

 Straits, Ceylon, Australia, New Zealand, the Cape — have founded sci- 

 entific societies in order to promote the growth of scientific research. 

 No doubt science, which is only a form of truth, is one in all lands, 

 but still its unity of purpose and fulfillment received an important 

 practical expression by our visit to Canada. This community of sci- 



