The Beginnings of American Science. 459 



it, "such had ])een the increase of hvinj; expenses, without a correspond- 

 ing increase in the .salaries of men of science." Few scientists were 

 engaged in the war, though one, O. M. Mitchel, who left the director- 

 ship of the Dudley Observatory to accept the command of an Ohio brigade, 

 died in service in 1862, and another, Couthouy, sacrificed his life in the 

 Navy. Others, like Ordway, left the ranks of science never to resume 

 their places as investigators. 



Scientific effort was paralyzed, and attention was directed to other mat- 

 ters. In 1864, when the Smithsonian building was burned, Lincoln, it 

 is said, looking at the flames from the windows of the Executive Man- 

 sion, remarked to some military officers who were present: ' ' Gentlemen, 

 yonder is a national calamity. We have no time to think about it now; 

 we must attend to other things." 



The only important events during the war were two; one the organiza- 

 tion of the National Academy of Sciences, which soon became what Bache 

 had remarked the necessity for in 1851, when he said: An institution of 

 science, supplementary to existing ones, is much needed in our country to 

 guide public action in reference to scientific matters.' 



The other was the passage, in 1862, of the bill for the establishment 

 of scientific educational institutions in every State. The agricultural 

 colleges were then, as they still are, unpopular among many scientific 

 men, but the wisdom of the measure is apparently before long to be 

 justified. 



Before the end of the decade the Northern States* had begun a career 

 of renewed prosperity, and the scientific institutions were reorganized. 

 The leading spirits were such men as Pierce, Henry, Agassiz, Gray, Bar- 

 nard, the Goulds, Newberry, Lea, Whittlesey, Foster, Rood, Cooke, 

 Newcomb, Newton, Wyman, Winchell. 



Among the rising men, some of them very prominent before 1870, were 

 Barker, Bolton, Chandler, Egleston, Hall, Harkness, Langley, Mayer, 

 Pickering, Young, Powell, Pumpelly, Abbe, CoUett, Emerson, Hartt, 

 Lupton, Marsh, Whitfield, Williams, N. H. Winchell, Agassiz, the Aliens, 

 Beale, Cope, Coues, Canby, Dall, Hoy, Hyatt, Morse, Orton, Perkins, Rey, 

 Riley, Scudder, Sidney Smith, Sterns, Tuttle, Verrill, Wood. 



Soon after the war the surveys of the West, which have coalesced to 

 form the United States Geological Survey, were forming under the direc- 

 tion of Clarence King, Lieutenant Wheeler, F. V. Hay den, and Major 

 Powell. 



The discovery of the nature of the corona of the sun by Young and 

 Harkness in 1869 was an event encouraging to the rising spirits of our 

 workers. 



■ Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, VI, 

 p. xlviii. 



= See Andrew D. "White's Scientific and Industrial Education in the ITnited States. 

 Populai Science Monthly, V, 1874, p. 170. 



