16 IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



motion, entered upon certain relations with the state, by which 

 our proceedings are published annually at public cost. This 

 puts us so far under obligation. We must render quid pro quo. 

 Our publications should be such, at least in part, as should be 

 of immediate use to our fellow men, to the citizens of this state. 

 This may not seem an ideal situation for a learned academy, 

 but it is, nevertheless, the situation. 



In the second place, by the conditions under which we live, 

 by our history, the circumstances of our social and political 

 life, we are to-day as men professing scientific education, laid 

 under special obligations. We are not members of an ancient 

 community where generations have painfully toiled and by 

 natural methods wrought out rules and customs under which 

 the conduct of life is on the whole fortunate. Our destiny calls 

 us rather to act at a most critical time, to be so far guides, to a 

 people for whom everything is new, all conditions, especially 

 physical conditions, unknown, untried; man's relation to the 

 world and the relation of the world to the happiness of civil- 

 ized man yet unascertained. Under these circumstances mem- 

 bers of the Iowa Academy of Sciences are at least justifiable, 

 if not surely to be commended, when for the present they turn 

 aside from the more ideal pursuits of problems in pure science 

 to the consideration of those which make for our temporal well- 

 being as a people. If we see our fellow citizens following in 

 any direction courses of conduct which our superior knowl- 

 edge, no matter how acquired, leads us to believe disastrous in 

 outcome, it is surely our duty as sons of knowledge to lift up 

 our voices in warning protest, if we are not to be held acces- 

 sories before the fact by those who in future shall judge this 

 generation. In other words, the academy just at this junc- 

 tion of the state's history ought to be in some way a mis- 

 sionary organization for the spread of such principles of natural 

 truth as affect the welfare of this particular part of the conti- 

 nent. 



To illustrate. Aside from the mere matter of solar heat the 

 most important factor to our existence is the supply of water. 

 I am of tbe opinion that the important problem before the people 

 of Iowa to-day is the maintenance over its broad prairies of an 

 equable supply of moisture. 



Could our science by any plan devised guarantee this we 

 should deserve, if we did not receive, the grateful homage of 

 all the future. The report by Mr. Norton is but a beginning 



