182 THE GROWTH OP SCIENCE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 



we are concerned, be so equipped and so sustained that the risk of 

 failure and disaster may be made as small, and the hope of being able 

 not merely to snatch a hurried glimpse of lands not yet seen, but to 

 gather in with full hands a rich harvest of the facts which men not of 

 one science only, but of many, long to know, as great as possible. 



Another international scientific effort demands a word of noticfe. 

 The need which every inquirer in science feels to know, and to know 

 quickly, what his fellow- worker, wherever on the globe he may be 

 carrying on his work or making known his results, has done or is 

 doing, led some four years back to a proposal for carrying out by 

 international cooperation a complete current index, issued promptly, 

 of the scientific literature of the world. Though much labor in many 

 lands has been spent upon the undertaking, the pi'oject is not yet an 

 accomplished fact. Nor can this, perhaps, be wondered at, when the 

 difficulties of the task are weighed. Difficulties of language, diffi- 

 culties of driving in one team all the several sciences which, like young 

 horses, wish each to have its head free with leave to go its own way, 

 difficulties mechanical and financial, of press and post, difficulties raised 

 b}' existing interests — these and yet other difticulties are obstacles not 

 easy to be overcome. The most striking and the most encouraging 

 features of the deliberations which have now been going on for three 

 \'ears have been the repeated expressions, coming not from this or that 

 quarter only, but from almost all quarters, of an earnest desire that 

 the effort should succeed, of a sincere belief in the good of interna- 

 tional cooperation, and of a willingness to sink as far as possible indi- 

 vidual interests for the sake of the common cause. In the face of 

 such a spirit we may surely hope that the man}^ difficulties will ulti- 

 mately pass out of sight. 



Perhaps, however, not the least notable fact of international coop- 

 eration in science is the proposal which has been made within the last 

 two years that the leading academies of the world should, by repre- 

 sentatives, meet at intervals to discuss questions in which the learned 

 of all lands are interested. A month hence a preliminary meeting of 

 this kind will ])e held at Wiesbaden; and it is at least probable that the 

 closing year of that nineteenth century in which science has plaj^ed so 

 great a part may at Paris during the great World's Fair — which every 

 friend, not of science only, but of humanity, trusts may not be put 

 aside or even injured through any untowOjrd event, and which prom- 

 ises to be an occasion not of pleasurable sight-seeing only, but also, 

 by its man}' international congresses, of international comunming in 

 the search for truth — witness the first select Witenagemote of the sci- 

 ence of the world. 



I make no apology for having thus touched on international (cooper- 

 ation. I should have been wanting had I not done so on the memo- 

 rable occasion of this meeting. A hundred years ago two great 

 nations were grappling with each other in a tierce struggle which had 



