IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 13 



activity. Inasmuch as such a plan affords the speaker oppor- 

 tunity to say pleasant things about his colleagues as well as to 

 give free expression to some of his own peculiar notions which 

 might not otherwise find audience at all, I have concluded to 

 improve my opportunity and to implore your patience while for a 

 little space I attempt to follow the example of my honored 

 predecessors. I claim no novelty in what I have to say; I 

 announce no discovery; I would simply (1) congratulate my 

 colleagues on present prospects and (2) call attention to some 

 matters which have for a long time profoundly impressed 

 themselves upon my mind. 



Since our last meeting activity in the scientific world at 

 large has nowhere for a moment ceased. Physicists and biol- 

 ogists still vie with each other in the far-reaching range 

 of their researches if not in the brilliancy of reported discovery. 

 Since January 1, 1897, in the world of physics and chemistry 

 so much has been accomplished in the way of applied science 

 that even attempt to enumerate would be futile here. One writer 

 declares the past year, in this particular, the most marked of 

 the last quarter of the century. The applications of electricity 

 to all sorts of analyses, especially qualitative, to the separation 

 of minerals, reduction of valuable ores and similar problems 

 will constitute the theme of by no means the least interesting 

 chapter in the history of the century's scientific work. In 

 pure chemistry the liquefaction of fluorine, in view of the 

 immense technical difficulties which must be surmounted, is 

 regarded as an especially noteworthy triumph of modern persist- 

 ency, ingenuity, and skill. In the engineering field the most 

 colossal enterprises are no sooner completed than others more 

 gigantic, more stupendous still, are immediately proposed. 

 Hutton's compressed-air locks to connect Chicago with the sea, 

 to lift an Atlantic steamer over Niagara Falls, may be named 

 as illustration. 



In biologic science it is difficult to pick out the achievement 

 of any defined period. All work is continuous. That of to-day 

 includes that of yesterday, and forecasts what shall be told 

 to-morrow. The final disposal of the oriental plague, its com- 

 plete control, is the latest achievement in bacteriology. In 

 general botany I esteem the discovery of motile nuclei, anther- 

 ozoids in the sexual apparatus of Gingkoand other similar forms 

 the most interesting botanical revelation of recent days; bind- 

 ing as it does, still more closely the gymnosperms with the 



