SECRETARY'S REPORT. 105 



ilized world at this day recognize that science, exact science, is 

 but the sure application of common sense to the phenomena by 

 which we are surrounded. You have all, doubtless, heard the 

 story of the dervise in the desert and the lost camel, showing 

 so strikingly the truth of that long celebrated plirase of the 

 illustrious Bacon, in which he speaks of man as the minister and 

 interpreter of nature. The dervise, in his travel across the 

 desert, met with a party of merchants who had lost their camel. 

 He accosted them — " Friends, have you not lost your camel ? " 

 "Yes." " Was it not blind in one eye ? " -'Yes." " Was it 

 not lame in one of the fore legs ? " " Yes." " Had it not lost 

 one of its 'front teeth?" "Yes." "Was it not laden with 

 corn and honey ? " " Yes. Dervise, show us our camel ! " 

 The answer was, " I have not seen your camel. I know not 

 where the animal may have wandered." Indignant and 

 enraged, they dragged the dervise before a justice, and his sim- 

 ple, satisfactory plea was this : " I have not seen the lost camel, 

 but I saw the prints of the animal on the sands. I saw that 

 there was a failure in one of the steps, at each successive impres- 

 sion of his progress. I saw that the grass that had been bitten 

 where the scant herbage grew, always presented a little tuft, 

 uncropped in the centre. I saw by the direction of the bite that 

 the head had been turned obliquely ; and the busy ants on one 

 side and the clustering bees on the other, told me what was the 

 burden of the animal. Thus, then, I recognized the path of 

 the camel and his peculiarities ; and by the simple application 

 of the means of observation with which Providence has endowed 

 me, and the use of my own simple common sense, I interpreted 

 the phenomena and made the discovery." 



Such is the practical application of the intellect of man in the 

 interpretation of nature, in all the departments in which human 

 discovery has been advanced. There is nothing special, there is 

 nothing peculiar, there is nothing mysterious in science. It is 

 but the multiplied, carefully renewed observation of the facts 

 that abound everywhere and at all times around us, and the 

 application of common sense, tlie ordinary principles of right 

 reasoning, to those facts ; enabling us to evolve the grandest 

 and most magnificent laws, whether those laws be such as con- 

 cern the dust that we tread beneath our feet, or such as link 

 together the starry suns, and the myriads of planets that encircle 



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