GERMANY IN SCIENCE 18 



utter insignificance in the universe. 



There are a few great names in astronomical science which 

 were borne by men in Germany, all of whom are now long 

 dead and turned to dust. We can never forget Kepler, Arge- 

 lander, Bessel, Hansen, and Roemer. Great as are these names, 

 how much more glorious is the galaxy of names which follows: 

 in England, Sir Isaac Newton, theHershels, LordRosse, Airy, 

 Adams, Halley, Rutherfurd and Sir John Huggins; in France, 

 Arago, Cassini, Delaunay, Gassendi, Lagrange, Le Verrier, 

 and the greatest of them all, Laplace; in Italy, Galileo Galilei, 

 Schiapparelli, Secchi; in Poland Copernicus, who was educated 

 at the University of Bologna in Italy, but is buried in Prus- 

 sia, (which by the way, makes a specialty of burying the good 

 and great) ; in Russia, the Struves, Backlund, and Belopolsky; 

 in the United States Young, Langley, Newcomb, Harkness, 

 Burnham, Keeler, Pickering, Peters, Hale, Campbell, and 

 our own Schlesinger. 



When it comes to the tools which astronomers use you know 

 that the biggest and the best telescopes in the world have 

 been made in America, and that there are not anywhere in 

 Europe such telescopes as those designed and erected by Alvan 

 Clarke for the Lick, the Yerkes, and other great observatories. 

 When the astronomers of the world need good spectroscopes, 

 or photographic lenses they send here to Pittsburgh to "uncle 

 John Brashear' ' to make them. When Prof. Max Wolf of Heidel- 

 berg a few years ago wanted an exceptionally fine set of len- 

 ses with which to do a piece of exceptionally fine photograph- 

 ic work, he commissioned Dr. Brashear to make them. 



Turning from physics, chemistry, and astronomy, to geo- 

 graphy, I may say that in the field of geographic discovery 

 Germany has done absolutely so little that it is hardly 

 worth mentioning. Germany came into the field too late to be 

 of much use. She makes good maps, and her teachers have 

 written some good text-books dealing with the science, but 

 her chief function in geography has been latterly to fool with 

 existing political boundaries, which her neighbors naturally 

 do not like. Germany did not discover America, she was not 



