PROGRESSIVENESS OF SCIENCE. 67 



as it could be put to practical use." He instances 

 the discoveries preceding the use of antiseptics and of 

 Rontgen rays. 



Undue insistence on practical results is apt to be 

 unjust, partly because no one is wise enough to pre- 

 dict the outcome of a research, and partly because 

 secure progress in science is often extremely slow. 

 The twitching legs of Galvani's frog were studied as 

 a theoretical curiosity ; who could have told that they 

 pointed to the flicking needle of the telegraph ? It 

 Avas not for practical ends that William Smith 

 plodded afoot over England, neither resting nor hur- 

 rying in his exploration of the strata, but how much 

 of the exploitation of Britain's mineral resources 

 had its origin in his maps ? Or who can say that the 

 series of discoveries which found the open sesame 

 of coal-tar and brought forth its treasures had at first 

 any practical outlook ? 



One use which a volume like this may have is to 

 curb the impatience of the practical man in regard to 

 experiments whose outcome he regards as useless, and 

 to prompt him to a more generous support of 

 scientific research. A little knowledge of the history 

 of science may not be altogether a dangerous thing, 

 if it suggests that from apparently inauspicious be- 

 ginnings and from apparently unpromising items of 

 honest work, great results may follow. Spectrum 

 analysis a method of very great importance to 

 astronomer and physicist, chemist and physiologist — 

 had its beginning in some apparently insignificant 

 observations by Marcgraf, Herschel, and others. 

 Pasteur's at first sight extremely theoretical re- 

 searches on the hemihedral facets of tartrate crystals 

 were logically as well as actually connected with his 

 practical researches on fermentation. 



