32 KANSAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



The science of chemistry is another of the great factors of human 

 progress, a veritable child of the nineteenth century. Chemical anal- 

 ysis stops at no obstacle, shrinks from no difficulties, examines what 

 we eat and tells us what we shall drink, liquifies common air, pro- 

 nounces upon the purity of drugs, unravels the mysteries of nature, 

 and blesses mankind in all the functions of life. 



The medical practitioner has need of the chemist. The lawyer 

 summons to his aid the chemist to unravel the difficulties of criminal 

 jurisprudence ; chemists for the mines, for the sugar-mills, for the 

 manufacture of colors ; chemists for everything. 



In the problem of life upon earth, chemistry has become the hand- 

 maid of nearly all the other physical sciences. Physics, astronomy, 

 biology, botany, and that most bitterly fought of all modern theories, 

 evolution, are more or less indebted to chemistry for the firm founda- 

 tion upon which they rest. 



What would now be thought of an instructor in science advising 

 his students to shun the writings of Darwin as false and dangerous ? 

 Yet not many years ago such was the case. The theory of evolution 

 is an established fact. It teaches in no uncertain way, and beyond 

 controversy, that the survival of the fittest is a law established by the 

 Almighty that is as regular and immutable as that other law, that the 

 attraction of two bodies varies directly as their masses and inversely 

 as the squares of their distances. "The Origin of Species by Natu- 

 ral Selection," announced by Darwin in 1863, proved, as well as any- 

 thing can be proved, the variations in species, and at the same time 

 pointed out their causes. By a single stroke, the old theories of special 

 creations and cataclysmal changes in the crust of the earth were pushed 

 aside to give way to a philosophy based upon true scientific lines. 

 Closely associated with chemistry and evolution — and a child of the 

 nineteenth century also — is the science of biology, another term that 

 has been held up to ridicule and derision ; and yet it has been estab- 

 lished beyond doubt by microscopical analysis that all organic life, 

 whether animal or vegetable, is the result of cells, and that protoplasm 

 is identical in plants and animals. At this point biology receives 

 help from the chemical laboratory. Infinitely little things as well as 

 infinitely large ones are examined with attention and profoundest 

 thought; and it is all done, not in the interest of controversy, but 

 that the truth may be reached. The microbe, the cell, the atom, the 

 light from a distant star, the composition of the star itself, the num- 

 ber of vibrations of light, of heat, of sound, and the very essence of 

 things, are studied by the scientist of all lands. Countless millions of 

 stars are added to the galaxy, the parallaxes of stars are measured, and 

 the size and velocity of atoms of gas are estimated with a degree of 

 certainty that is marvelous. 



