November 14, 1901J 



NA TURE 



45 



nuper tarn insigne vivacitatis documentum dedistis, ut ex 

 alumnis vestris, quos quindecim milium ad numetum per annos 

 ducentos laurea vestra coronastis, partem plus quam dimidiam 

 adhuc inter vivos numerate potueritis. Valete atque etiam in 

 posterum plurimos per annos felices vivite. " 



The doctorate of laws was conferred on President Roosevelt 

 and forty-six others, including the following men of science and 

 college presidents :— Prof. J. H. Biles (Glasgow), Dr. J. S. 

 Billings (New York), President C. \V. Dabney (Tennessee), Prof. 

 D. W. Finlay (Aberdeen), Prof. Jacques Hadamard (Paris), 

 Dr. S. P. Langley iSmithsonian Institution), Prof. A. A. 

 Michelson (Chicago), Prof. \V. Osier (Baltimore), President 

 H. S. Pritchett (Massachusetts), President Ira Remsen (Balti- 

 more), Prof. O. N. Rood (Columbia University), Prof. Wilhelm 

 Waldeyer (Berlin), President J. B. Angell (Michigan), Principal 

 William Peterson (McGill University), Mr. Seth Low (ex-presi- 

 dent of Columbia University), President J. G. Schurman 

 (Cornell), Mr. Franklin Carter (ex-president of Williams 

 College), President W. R. Harper (Chicago), Mr. \V. C. 

 Harrison (Pennsylvania), President F. L. Patton (Princeton), 

 President B. I. Wheeler (University of California). 



On October 22, Dr. D. C. Oilman, a graduate of Yale, and 

 for twenty-five years president of the Johns Hopkins University, 

 delivered an address on the relations of Yale University to 

 letters and science. The address is published in full in Science 

 of November i, from which we select a few notes on men of 

 science who have been connected with Yale. 



The Collegiate School of Connecticut was the beginning 

 of Yale University; it became Yale College in 1718, and 

 about the beginning of the nineteenth century developed into 

 the University. During the last fifty years two new schools 

 have sprung into existence — the Sheffield Scientific School and 

 the School of Fine Arts — and the former has increased in im- 

 portance in a most remarkable manner. 



Prior to the Revolution the two men of more than provincial 

 fame whose names are associated with Yale are Edwards, the 

 naturalist, and Eliot. Before Yale College was fifty years old, 

 Benjamin Franklin became its valued friend and was enrolled 

 among its laureati in 1753. Four years previously he had presented 

 the College with an electrical machine which enabled the young 

 tutor, Ezra Stiles, to perform the first electrical experiments 

 tried in New England. A Fahrenheit thermometer was a sub- 

 sequent gift, and his influence led the University of Edinburgh 

 to confer upon Stiles a doctor's degree. 



At the dawn of scientific activity in New England the com- 

 manding and attractive figure of Manasseh Cutler stands out. 

 Cutler, a man of the true scientific spirit, an observer of the 

 heavens above and of the earth beneath, is the father of New 

 England botany. He made a noteworthy contribution to the 

 memoirs of the American Academy, collected and described 

 between three and four hundred plants of New England, and left 

 seven volumes of manuscript notes, which are now in the Harvard 

 herbarium, awaiting the editorial care of a botanical antiquary. 



Among others whose names are renowned in the world of 

 science are Silliman, leader in chemistry, mineralogy and 

 geology, equalled only by Agassiz ; Olmsted, the patient, 

 inventive instructor, whose impulses toward original investiga- 

 tion were not supported by his opportunities ; Loomis, inter- 

 preter of the law of storms and master of the whirlwind ; Dana, 

 the oceanographer ; Newton, devoted to abstract thought, who 

 revealed the mysteries of meteoric showers and their relation to 

 comets, not before suggested ; and Marsh, the inland explorer, 

 whose discoveries had an important bearing on the doctrine of 

 evolution — these all, with the brilliant corps of the Sheffield 

 Scientific School, were men of rare ability who expounded and 

 illustrated the laws of nature with such clearness and force that 

 the graduates of Yale are everywhere to be counted as for 

 certain the promoters of science. 



Two agencies are conspicuous in the second era of Yale, the 

 American Journal of Science and the Sheffield Scientific School. 

 Benjamin Silliman showed great sagacity when he perceived, in 

 1818, the importance of publication, and established of his own 

 motion, on a plan that is still maintained, a repository of scien- 

 tific papers, which through its long history has been recognised 

 both in Europe and in the United States as comprehensive and 

 accurate ; a just and sympathetic recorder of original work ; a 

 fair critic of domestic and foreign researches ; and a constant 

 promoter of experiment and observation. In the profit and 

 loss account, it appears that the College has never contributed 



to the financial support of. the journal, but it has itself gained 

 reputation from the fact that throughout the world of science 

 Silliman and Dana, successive editors from the first volume, 

 have been known as members of the faculty of Yale. 



Agricultural science in the United States owes much to the 

 influences which have gone out from the Sheffield School. 

 J. P. Norton, J. A. Porter, S. W. Johnson, and W. H. 

 Brewer are the followers in our generation of Jared Eliot, the 

 colonial advocate of agricultural science. 



In the thirties of last century there was an informal associa- 

 tion which may be called a voluntary syndicate for the study 

 of astronomy ; and the example and success of these Yale 

 brethren initiated that zeal for astronomical research which 

 distinguishes America. The Clark telescope, acquired in 

 1830, was then unsurpassed in the United States. One of 

 its earliest and noteworthy revelations was the appearance 

 of Halley's comet, which was observed, from the tower in 

 the Athenteum, weeks before the news arrived of its having 

 been seen in Europe. This gave an impulse to observatory 

 projects in Cambridge and Philadelphia, and college after 

 college soon emulated the example of Yale by establishing 

 observatories in embryo, for the study of the heavens. The 

 most brilliant luminary in the constellation was E. P. Mason, a 

 genius, who died at twenty-two, having made a profound im- 

 pression on his contemporaries by discoveries, observations, 

 computations and delineations. Under the leadership of 

 Olmsted, Herrick, Bradley, Loomis and Hamilton L. Smith 

 were associate observers, and they were afterwards reinforced by 

 Twining, Lyman and Newton. Chauvenet became a w'riter and 

 teacher of renown, and Stoddard carried to the Nestorians the 

 telescope that he had made at Yale under the syndicate's influence. 



In the science of mineralogy Yale has long maintined the 

 American leadership. No one is likely to overestimate the 

 influence of the collection in the Peabody Museum upon the 

 mind of James D. Dana, nor to overestimate the value of his 

 treatise on mineralogy which, revised and enlarged by able 

 cooperators, continues to be a standard text-book in every 

 country where mineralogy is studied. In view of its recent 

 acquisition, the Museum may almost be described as the "House 

 of the Dinosaur." Its choice collections give an epitome of the 

 sciences of mineralogy, crystallography, meteoroids, geology, 

 palaeontology and natural history, from the days of Silliman to 

 those of the Danas, Brush, Marsh and Verrill. 



In controversial periods the attitude of Yale has been very- 

 serviceable to the advancement of truth. The Copernican cos- 

 mography was probably accepted from the beginning although 

 elsewhere the Ptolemaic conceptions of the universe maintained 

 their supremacy, and the notes which Rector Pierson made on 

 physics when he was a student in Harvard come "between the 

 Ptolemaic theory and the Newtonian " (Dexter). When geology 

 became a science, its discoveries were thought to be in conflict 

 with the teachings of the Scripture. Silliman stood firm in the 

 defence of geology, and although some of the bastions on which 

 he relied became untenable, the keep never surrendered, the 

 flag was never lowered. When the modern conceptions of 

 evolution were brought forward by Darwin, Wallace and their- 

 allies, when conservatists dreaded and denounced the new inter- 

 pretation of the natural world, the wise and cautious utterances 

 of Dana at first dis.sipated all apprehensions of danger and then- 

 accepted in the main the conclusions of the new biological 

 school. Marsh's expeditions to the Rocky Mountains and his 

 marvellous discoveries of ancient life made the Peabody Museum 

 an important repository of geological testimony to the truth of 

 evolution. 



But there are many others whose work has promoted science 

 at Yale, and the next centennial discourse will do justice to 

 them. Among the departed whose careers were made outside 

 the walls of Yale, Percival, the geologist of Connecticut and 

 Wisconsin ; J. D. Whitney, the geologist of California j 

 Chauvenet, the mathematician : Hubbard, the astronomer ; 

 Sullivant, the chief authority in mr)sses as Eaton is in ferns; 

 F. A. P. Barnard, the accomplished president of Columbia ; 

 Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton-gin ; and S. F. B. 

 Morse, whose name is familiar from its relation to the electric 

 telegraph — are especially entitled to honourable mention in this 

 jubilee. So is a much older graduate, David Bushnell, the 

 inventor of submarine explosives — the precursor of the modern 

 torpedists. 



This is a record of which Yale may well be proud ; and the 

 series of volumes which has been issued in commemoration of 



NO. 1672, VOL. 65] 



