842 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ferer meanwhile is the State, which con- 

 demns its young men either to listen to 

 antiquated and utterly inadequate dis- 

 cussions of biological questions in the 

 State university or else to go abroad for 

 the knowledge which is denied at home. 



THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION IN 

 BROOKLYN. 



THE American Association had a 

 very pleasant and profitable meeting in 

 Brooklyn. That city has a peculiar 

 character among American towns of 

 great size in being a city of homes 

 rather than of business, and is the 

 residence of a large number of liberal- 

 minded, public- spirited men, and of 

 women warmly interested in every- 

 thing tending to promote advance in 

 knowledge and the means of right liv- 

 ing. The scientific students of the 

 country could not fail to find themselves 

 at once at home among such people. 

 This feature of the social and intellec- 

 tual life of the place was well presented 

 by Dr. Backus in his address of welcome 

 to the association, when, referring to 

 the fact that the citizens bad failed to 

 secure the great university of which 

 they had dreamed, he intimated that 

 they had a more than abundant com- 

 pensation in the great private high 

 schools of world-wide reputation, gen- 

 erously supported by the public without 

 governmental or municipal aid, and ap- 

 propriating their annual surplus rev- 

 enues to the strengthening of their 

 faculties and equipments ; besides sup- 

 porting the largest free high schools for 

 young men and for young women in the 

 world, and possessing as superstructures 

 on the private foundations of generous 

 benefactors an institution furnishing 

 " the most practical, the most extensive, 

 and the most advanced system of in- 

 dustrial instruction to be found in our 

 country," and another which maintained 

 twenty-six departments of original sci- 

 entific research. Dr. Brinton replied in 

 behalf of the association, that it recog- 

 nized and appreciated the advantages of 



a reunion in a city "whose streets are 

 lined with edifices erected by the mu- 

 nificence of a few for the benefit of the 

 many, and which in so many features 

 testifies to the broad liberality and en- 

 lightened intelligence of its foremost 

 citizens." 



Dr. Brinton in his address described 

 the association as a body cultivating a 

 science the spirit of which is to seek as 

 its goal truth, " the one test of which 

 is that it will bear clear and untram- 

 meled investigation " ; which admits 

 and appeals to no other evidence than 

 " that which it is in the power of every 

 one to judge, and which is absolutely 

 open to the world, having about it no 

 such thing as " an inner secret, a mys- 

 terious gnosis " ; a science at once mod- 

 est in its own claims and liberal to the 

 claims of others, and " noble, inspiring, 

 consolatory" in its mission, "lifting the 

 mind above the gross contacts of life, 

 presenting aims which are at once prac- 

 tical, humanitarian, and spiritually ele- 

 vating." Dr. Harkness, the retiring 

 president, chose as his subject the mag- 

 nitude of the Solar System and the ele- 

 ments which enter into the determina- 

 tion of it. His address, while it con- 

 tained much ^matter of great interest, 

 was largely technical, dealing considera- 

 bly with mathematical discussion, and is 

 hardly susceptible of being presented in 

 popular form. 



The vice-presidential addresses, like- 

 wise, tended to be technical. Dr. Franz 

 Boaz discussed the relation of Race Fac- 

 ulties to the Advancement of Civiliza- 

 tion, maintaining that too much em- 

 phasis has been laid upon them at the 

 expense of the environment, which is 

 also a factor of very great importance. 

 Vice-President G. C. Comstock ad- 

 dressed Section A upon Binary Stars. 

 Prof. Mansfield Merriam, in the Section 

 of Mechanical Science and Engineering, 

 considered the Resistance of Materials 

 under Impact. In his address upon a 

 Stable Monetary Standard, Vice-Presi- 

 dent Farquhar, in the Section of Eco- 



