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THE RELATION OF THE SCIENCES TO EACH OTHER. 



Henry Crew. 



'"^Nlr. Toastmaster, Ladies and Gentlemen : — I do not know 

 just how it happened that I find myself on this program, after 

 a delightful dinner and interesting speeches, to speak upon such 

 a subject as "The Relation of the Sciences to each other," 

 but I think it is due nine-tenths to the persuasiveness of the 

 genial Secretary of the Illinois Academy of Science and about 

 one-tenth to the fact that I thought this would be a good sub- 

 ject to bring before an Academy interested in so many differ- 

 ent subjects. 



However, I can offer the same assurance offered by a certain 

 cab driver, according to President Harris. A friend of his travel- 

 ing in Porto Rico hired a carriage to take him to some point 

 four miles out in the country, and after he had ridden a dis- 

 tance which seemed to him about six miiles he called the driver 

 and said Ts it much farther?' 'O, no, sir, its nearer,' answered 

 the driver. I can assure you that the end of the program is 

 already nearer than it was before I began to speak. 



I am not going to indulge in any history of the classifica*- 

 tion of the sciences ranging, perhaps, from Aristotle to Swift, 

 but I am going to use what little time is at my disposal to call 

 your attention to a system which has been helpful to me ; one 

 which we owe to a group of American gentlemen, and one 

 which was put into ])racticc and given a severe test at a city 

 less than one hundred miles from where we are sitting this 

 evening. The system was proposed by a committee of seven 

 gentlemen and adopted in the International Congress of Arts 

 and Science in St. Louis in 1904. My reason for calling at- 

 tention to this system is the fact that it has been very help- 

 ful to mc and the fact that I find it very little known even 

 among scientific men. 



