The Beginnings of American Science. 455 



on a safe basis of the greatest of all the generalizations of science, the 

 doctrines of the Conservation of Knergy and of Evolution. Within this 

 time the larger moiety of our knowledge of light, heat, electricity, and 

 magnetism has been ac([uired. Our present chemistry has been, in great 

 part, created, while the whole science has been remodeled from founda- 

 tion to roof. 



It may be natural [continued Professor Huxley] that progress should appear most 

 striking to me among those sciences to which my own attention has been directed, 

 but I do not think this will wholly account for the apparent advance " by leaps and 

 bounds" of the biological sciences within my recollection. The cell theory was the 

 latest novelty when I began to work with the microscope, and I have watched the 

 building of the whole vast fabric of histology. I can say almost as much of 

 embryology, since Von Baer's great work was published in 1828. Our knowledge 

 of the morphology of the lower plants and animals and a great deal of that of the 

 higher forms has very largely been obtained in my time ; while physiology has been 

 put upon a totally new foundation and, as it were, reconstructed, by the thorough 

 application of the experimental method to the study of the phenomena of life, and 

 by the accurate determination of the purely physical and chemical components of 

 these phenomena. The exact nature of the processes of sexual and nonsexual repro- 

 duction has been brought to light. Our knowledge of geographical and geological 

 distribution and of the extinct forms of life has been increased a hundredfold. As 

 for the progress of geological science, what more need be said than that the first 

 volume of Lyell's Principles bears the date of 1830. 



It can not be expected that, within the limits of this address, I should 

 attempt to show what America has done in the last half century. I am 

 striving to trace the beginnings, not the results, of scientific work on 

 this side of the Atlantic. I will simply quote what was said by the 

 London Times in 1876 : 



In the natural distribution of subjects the history' of enterprise, discovery, and 

 conquest, and the growth of republics fell to America, and she has dealt nobly with 

 them. In the wider and more multifarious provinces of art and science she runs 

 neck and neck with the mother country and is never left behind. 



It is difficult to determine exactly the year when the first waves of this 

 renaissance reached the shores of America. Silliman, in his Priestley 

 address, placed the date at 1845. I should rather say 1840, when the 

 first national scientific association was organized, although signs of 

 awakening may be detected even before the beginning of the previous 

 decade. We must, however, carefully avoid giving too much prominence 

 to the influence of individuals. I have spoken of this period of thirty 

 years as the period of Agassiz. Agassiz, however, did not bring the 

 waves with him; he came in on the crest of one of them; he was not the 

 founder of modern American natural history, but as a public teacher 

 and organizer of institutions, he exerted a most important influence upon 

 its growth. 



One of the leading events of the decade was the reorganization of the 

 Coast Survey in 1844, under the .sage administration of Alexander Dallas 



