FIFTY YEARS OF AMERICAN SCIENCE 3 



Ultima Thule more remote in thought and interest than are 

 Hawaii or even the Philippines to-day. 



Then, as now, the nation was in the throes of growing 

 pains, acuter than now, because territorial expansion was 

 more rapid; Texas had recently given its empire — an empire 

 of barren breadths and bloody bandits, according to the 

 critics — and Florida had lately come to us from Spain; 

 Iowa and Wisconsin had entered the family of states, and 

 Oregon had Ijecome a troublesome territory; and the treaty 

 of Guadalupe-Hidalgo had just been approved, bringing 

 California and New Mexico (with most of what is now Ari- 

 zona) into our possession — adding the care of hopeless deserts 

 and the control of treacherous tribes and an alien population 

 to the duties of an overworked legislative and administrative 

 government, and preparing the way for the witticism, '^Mex- 

 ico will be forgiven all if she will only take back her lands." 

 In truth, there was danger, painfully manifest thirteen years 

 later, of disruption through overgrowth of the local interests 

 and provincialisms alwaj^s straining our theoretic union — 

 a danger happily removed forever a quarter century later 

 by the railway and the telegraph, which gave a stronger 

 unity than political faith or governmental doctrine. 



The progress of the nation during the half century is be- 

 yond parallel. By normal growth and peaceful absorption 

 without foreign conquest the population has trebled, and the 

 national wealth has increased tenfold. The subjugation of 

 natural forces has proceeded at a higher rate, and the exten- 

 sion of knowledge and the diffusion of intelligence have gone 

 forward more rapidl}^ still. This advance, so great as to be 

 grasped by few minds, is the marvel of human history. The 

 world has moved forward as it never did before. Yet fully 

 half of the progress of the world, during the last fifty years, 

 has been ^Tought through the unprecedented energy of 

 American enterprise and genius, guided by American science. 



It is to a great degree through special research that knowl- 

 edge advances ; yet it is by no means to be forgotten that the 

 specialty is but a column in the fane of science, and that 

 arcades and keystones and swelling dome hold higher places. 

 Worthy has been the work of specialists in the extension of 



