252 THE AMERICAN CHEMIST. 



from 1880 to 1890 is most encouraging'. Great investigators like great 

 poets, like men great in any tiling, are born not made; born, may we 

 not truly say, out of the spirit of tbe country and the period in which 

 their great works are done. But when born they must be nurtured, 

 and the place for their nurture is the university. In this sense the 

 university must make the investigator as well as the investigation. In 

 the land where the spirit of investigation is rife there will be the most 

 material out of which to make investigators; and there too will men and 

 women destined to be such be most sure to drift into tlie line of life 

 work for which they are best adapted and receive the best training 

 for it. 



It seems to me that the relations of our society to this matter of the 

 furtherance of chemical investigation in this country are of vital impor- 

 tance; that if it does not appear in its stated meetings or the meetings 

 of its sections scattered throughout the country that it is alive with the 

 spirit of research, it will fail to establish its reascm for being; andmem- 

 bershij) of it will be of little advantage to anybody, and that the society 

 itself will be of little service to the countiy. 



I 



