202 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



elation is fulfilling its destiny by advancing science in America. If, 

 unhappily, our meetings should rather tend to cultivate a love for bric- 

 a-brac in science, if the stimulation and gratification of a quasi-Vin\m2\ 

 curiosity for scientific novelties be fostered, if our discussions should 

 become hot-beds of a more vigorous vegetation of personal vanity, 

 intellectual pugnacity, lust for notoriety, literary jealousies, conceited 

 reclamations, petty ambitions, or pecuniary schemes, how are our day 

 and generation to be benefited or improved? If our attention become 

 restricted to the details of the creation, and to the smaller manoeuvres 

 of the forces of Nature ; or if, on the other hand, we become habitu- 

 ated in the indulgence of vague generalizations, suggestions of pos- 

 sible theories, and half-completed or merely sketched and outlined 

 hypotheses — how are we ourselves, as workers of science, to escai)e 

 deterioration ? 



I can not shake off a suspicion that we talk and write too much ; 

 that the whole world talks too much ; and that the golden time for 

 silence is precisely then when we come together to talk. Were each 

 of us to utter only what he absolutely knows, what he is quite sure of, 

 what he has unimpeachable facts in sufficient number to confirm — 

 what a sudden illumination would overspread our meetings, glorifying 

 our science, and reinspiring us all ! But I turn from the Utopian 

 fancy, and invite your attention to a very different theme. 



There is a topic which I think should be frequently considered by 

 all who engage in scientific pursuits ; and by none so earnestly as by 

 those who are ambitious to reach the higher points of view, from 

 which to survey and describe those systematic combinations of phe- 

 nomena which are more or less panoramic : I allude of course to gen- 

 eralizers or discoverers of natural laws, and the professional teachers 

 of such laws ; while those who deal in itemized science, the mere ob- 

 servers of isolated facts, discriminating specimens and naming genera 

 and species in the animal, vegetable, or mineral worlds, and especially 

 such as occupy themselves with geographical and geological studies 

 in detail, stand in less need of having it pressed upon their attention, 

 because in their case it insists upon its own necessity. 



I allude to what is technically known among experts as " dead- 

 work." 



Tills topic has to be treated in the most prosaic style. To describe 

 dead-work is to narrate all those portions of our work which consume 

 the most time, give the most trouble, require the greatest patience and 

 endurance, and seem to produce the most insignificant results. It 

 comprises the collection, collation, comparison, and adjustment, the 

 elimination, correction, and re-selection, the calculation and representa- 

 tion — in a word, the entire first, second, and third handling of our 

 data in any branch of human learning — wholly perfunctory, prepara- 

 tory, and mechanical, wholly tentative, experimental, and defensive — 

 without which it is dangerous to proceed a single stage into reasoning 



