28 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



tlie technologic student which will lead to improvements in the 

 arts. The higher the character of the intellects thus brought 

 into close relations the more rapid will be the progress, both 

 in science and in practical inventions. As a mere means of 

 advancing the material and pecuniary interests of the nation, 

 it is therefore important to foster and stimulate the pursuit of 

 scientific truth, not only to give the knowledge of science to 

 men of practical turn of mind, but also to aid men of scientific 

 ability to pursue investigations in the unexplored realms of 

 nature. 



We should remember that although steam and its wonderful 

 applications to manufacturing, to ships and railway cars, have 

 been the reward of practical men seeking directly utilitarian 

 ends, yet, on the other hand, electricity and chemistry, with all 

 their wonderful fruits, in the electroplating of ornamental ware 

 and of the machinery of watches, in the electrotyping both of 

 ordinary printed matter and of maps and other engraving, in 

 the copperfacing of type, in the instantaneous transmission of 

 intelligence and of commercial orders even to distant continents, 

 in the improved arts of dyeing, including the discovery of the 

 marvellous aniline dyes, in the manufacture of the metals 

 magnesium and aluminum and their alloys, in the rapid con- 

 version of iron to steel, in new modes of rendering wood inde- 

 structible except by fire, in photography in its myriad applica- 

 tions — all these and many similar gifts to the world have been 

 the direct reward of scientific devotion to truth for truth's sake, 

 and without expectation of the invaluable technological results 

 of its discovery. 



Moreover, these great gifts to the material prosperity of the 

 world came in general from the investigations of men of the 

 very highest scientific attainment, whose mere learning of what 

 other men had done was very far beyond what can be acquired 

 in any of our colleges or universities, and whose industry and 

 zeal and genius carried them from that vantage point of the 

 highest that was known far into the realms of what was un- 

 known until they revealed it. 



Men of such natural gifts are rare. The grand theological 

 dogma of Maupertuis that the Divine Builder accomplishes his 

 ends with the least expenditure of means — so fruitful of results 

 in the mathematical investigation of physical laws — holds also 



