328 SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



17. nature, the greatest devotion of the observer and the 



Insuffici- 

 ency of mere collector, lead only a little way in finding out the hidden 



observation. 



paths of natural things or the behaviour of natural ob- 

 jects ; and however grateful we must be to those pioneers 

 of knowledge who with unrewarded patience amass the 

 material for later theorists, it is to the classification of a 

 Linnaeus, to the arrangements of a Cuvier, to the theories 

 of a Darwin, to the measurements of a Bradley and a 

 Herschel, most of all to the formulae of a Xewton or a 

 Gauss, followed by the calculations of their pupils, that 

 we are indebted for a real grasp, for a comprehensive 

 knowledge, of great masses of natural phenomena. 

 IB. Next to the pure love of nature, the desire to apply 



interest. natural knowledge, and to make it useful for practical 

 purposes, has rendered in return great services to science. 

 The Royal Society and the Royal Institution had both 

 from their infancy a large admixture of the practical 

 spirit. These were founded, more even than the academies 

 abroad, to a great extent upon the desire to make know- 

 ledge useful. 



The Governments of England and of France promoted 



lar fables which are only to be pitied! origin. Fortunately, a remarkable 

 What can I add to such a protocol I fall of stones, accompanied by 

 The philosophical reader will him- meteoric phenomena, took place in 

 self suggest what to say when he 1803 not far from Paris, at 1'Aigie 

 reads this authentic proof of an in the department de 1'Orne, and 

 evidently wrong fact, of a pheno- Biot was commissioned by the 

 menon which is physically impos- Academy to proceed to the dis- 

 able" (Wolf, 'Geschichteder Astro- trict and examine the case. In the 

 nomie,' 1877, p. 697 tq.) Chladni ' Relation,' ic.. which he read before 

 published his essay on the large the Institute, he established the 

 mass of iron found by the traveller fact that a meteor exploded in the 

 Pallas in Siberia in the year 1794, district, and that at the same time 

 and, in spite of adverse criticisms, , a fall of many thousand stones, 

 followed it up by a catalogue and , weighing about 20 tons, took place 



an atlas of meteoric stones, sug- 

 gesting that they were of cosmic 



(Biot. ' Melanges scientifiques et 

 litteraires,' voL L p. 15 tqq.) 



