556 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sure that this is an entire misapplication of 

 the law. 



The fact is, this law is so often misun- 

 derstood and misapplied that it becomes 

 dangerous to use it without clear concep- 

 tions of its nature. By many good hy- 

 draulic engineers it has been confounded 

 with the law of erosive power of currents ; 

 by others, with the quantity of material car- 

 ried in suspension ; and now Mr. Carter con- 

 founds it with quantity of matter carried in 

 solution. It were well if, in popular lan- 

 guage^ the name of the law were changed. 

 Perhaps it would be less liable to be misun- 

 derstood if it were called " lifti^ig-power 

 of currents." It expresses only the size of 

 the largest transportable particle. It is a 



law which concerns ia&va\j \he geologist and 

 the ore-dresser. The geologist finds certain 

 bowlders scattered about in the lower part 

 of a valley. The question is. Were they 

 brought by currents ; and, if so, what was 

 the velocity ? It is applied thus, by Dana, 

 in discussing the material brought down by 

 the Connecticut River during the Champlain 

 epoch. Again, the ore-dresser has crushed 

 rock, which he wishes to sort by means of a 

 current decreasing in velocity in its course. 

 The question is. Where will the particles of 

 different sizes drop ? I do not know any 

 other cases of practical application. Cer- 

 tainly it can have no application to matters 

 in solution. Joseph Le Cokte. 



Berkeley, Cal., November 22, 1888. 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



SCIENCE AS A HOPE IN POLITICS. 



THE following paragraph has been 

 circulating through the newspa- 

 pers : " The Lord Mayor of London, in 

 welcoming Professor Huxley to the city 

 recently, suggested that the position of 

 President of the Royal Society was 

 really one of even greater importance 

 than that of Prime Minister ; Mr. Glad- 

 stone is chief Minister of England, but 

 Professor Huxley was ' the head of the 

 intellectual life of the world.' " The 

 complaisant utterances of eminent offi- 

 cials, who are ever expected to say the 

 agreeable thing that shall put their 

 guests at ease, are not to be taken too 

 seriously; yet there is considerable sig- 

 nificance in this declaration of the Lord 

 Mayor of London, both from its impli- 

 cation of the vast changes that have 

 been wrought by science in the views 

 of human affairs, and from the open 

 recognition of these changes by so con- 

 spicuous a party. 



The advance of science is evinced in 

 numberless ways, but our vpeightiest 

 proof of it is found in the gradual ac- 

 ceptance of enlarged in place of nar- 

 rower views of the subject. New dis- 

 coveries are important; the widening 

 of the ranges of research is important ; 

 the extension of generalizations and the 

 better organization of positive knowl- 



edge are important; but more impor- 

 tant still is the growing general recog- 

 nition that science is the grand agency 

 in modern times for reshaping the com- 

 mon opinions of the community. 



By the narrower view of science, we 

 mean what may be called that profes- 

 sional conception of it by which it is re- 

 stricted to certain definite experimental 

 results. Our literary and theological 

 friends are especially solicitous that the 

 term science should be confined to phys- 

 ical science merely — laboratory science, 

 observatory science, manipulatory sci- 

 ence of any sort that can be regarded as 

 belonging properly to specialists. But 

 they grow jealous of it when it takes on 

 that wider and deeper meaning which 

 has been given to it by the growth of 

 ideas in these later times, and when it 

 is seen to involve a new method of 

 thought, of the most comprehensive ap- 

 plication, and bearing upon the whole 

 circle of human interests. They are 

 very commendatory of science, so long 

 as it is busy establishing new physical 

 facts and extending new physical truths, 

 but they regard it as an impertinent 

 usurper when it interferes with that 

 old order of conceptions which per- 

 vades the common life. 



But it has long been seen by the 

 more discerning that one of the great 



