236 LIFE OF PROFESSOR CHESTER DEWEY. 



tioiis in Williamstown. Siicli facts ought to impress tlie present gene- 

 ration with an idea of the zeal, energy, and ability of men avIio, in such 

 a state of things, could devote themselves to scientific pursuits. 



It should be recollected, also, that these inoneers in science were not 

 left free to devote any considerable portion of strength and time to inves- 

 tigation and the accumulation of specimens. They were generally over- 

 burdened with the work of giving instructions in subjects now distributed 

 into three or four departments. Transactions of learned societies were 

 procured with difficulty. Scientific journals were few, and in our country 

 unknow^n. Communication with Europe was slow and expensive. The 

 languages of modern Europe had not then been introduced into the courses 

 of public education, and few, comparatively, could command the time or 

 means to acquire them, or to travel abroad for the purpose of observation 

 and study. These sciences, themselves, being in a formative state, were 

 not difl'ereutiated, nor their limits marked out. These men, of necessity, 

 studied nature in the mass, meeting often the unclassified subject-matter of 

 several sciences in a single investigation. They constantly encountered 

 the difficulties resulting from faulty and incoherent terminology. Their 

 memories were burdened in keeping abreast with the changes of names 

 which rapid scientific progress made necessary. Classes as well as names 

 were in a state of constant flux, for we all know that an adequate ter- 

 minology always follows and never precedes the knowledge of systems 

 and laws. Their experience confirmed the maxim of the French savan, 

 that '-science est un langue bien fait." The tax upon time and memorj-, 

 requisite to keep abreast of the rapid movement of thought and discovery, 

 was enormous. Their mental experience became a register of the mass 

 of the false hypotheses, blunders, changes, revolutions, discoveries, and 

 generalizations which make up the brilliant and varied history of modern 

 science. They were obliged to acquire an equal facility in learning and 

 unlearning. The task of laying aside what had been painfully acquired, 

 and which some brilliant discovery had suddenly proved to be useless or 

 erroneous, was severer than the acquisition of what was new. 



In addition to all this, they were obliged to make a i)lace in an already 

 occupied curriculum of college study, for their favorite studies, and to 

 vindicate to the public mind their dignity and value. Like the early set- 

 tlers of our unbroken forests, they Avere obliged to remove obstacles, 

 and furnish a (iareer for those who were to come after them. It is not 

 strange, then, that the attainments of such men were affected and modi- 

 fied by the conditions of their scientific life — that their knowledge was 

 less specific in its form, less methodical in its arrangement, than that of 

 their successors at the present day. It is not strange that in the pre- 

 sentation of subjects thej' did not take note always of those metes and 

 bounds which the accumulated thought of half a century has set up — 

 that their mental furniture was encyclopaedic and compendious, rather 

 than minute, classified, and exhaustive. The immense range of the 

 natural sciences, now that the work of evolution has been so far com- 



