84 BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 



The agricultural colleges were then, as they still are, unpopular 

 among many scientific men, but the wisdom of the measure is 

 apparently before long to be justified. 



Before the end of the decade, the Northern States* had begun a 

 career of renewed prosperity, and the scientific institutions were 

 reorganized. The leading spirits were such men as Pierce, 

 Henry, Agassiz, Gray, Barnard, the Goulds, Newberry, Lea, 

 Whittlesey, Foster, Rood, Cooke, Newcomb, Newton, Wy- 

 man, Winchell. 



Among the rising men, some of them very prominent before 

 1870, were Barker, Bolton, Chandler, Eggleston, Hall, Hark- 

 ness, Langley, Mayer, Pickering, Young, Powell, Pumpelly, 

 Abbe, Collett, Emerson, Hartt, Lupton, Marsh, Whitfield, 

 Williams, N. H. Winchell, Agassiz, the Aliens, Beale, Cope, 

 Coues, Canby, Dall, Hoy, Hyatt, Morse, Orton, Perkins, Rey, 

 Riley, Scudder, Sidney Smith, Stearns, Turtle, Verrill, Wood. 



Soon after the war the surveys of the West, which have coa- 

 lesced to form the U. S. Geological Survey, were forming under 

 the direction of Clarence Cook, Lieut. Wheeler, F. V. Hay den, 

 and Major Powell. 



The discovery of the nature of the corona of the sun by Young 

 and Harkness in 1869 was an event encouraging to the rising 

 spirits of our workers. 



XVIII. 



With 1869 we reach the end of the third period and the thresh- 

 old of that in which we are living. I shall not attempt to define 

 the characteristics of the natural history of to-day, though I wish 

 to direct attention to certain tendencies and conditions which 

 exist. Let me, however, refer once more to the past, since it 

 leads again directly up to the present. 



* See A D WHITE'S Scientific and Industrial Education in the United 

 States. < Popular Science Monthly, v, p. 170. 



