October 9, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



469 



alone, but I believe that the responsible 

 officials of any scientific government de- 

 partment will agree with what I say. 



Tear by year some Timotheus ' ' with his 

 sounding flute and tuneful lyre" performs 

 some miracle by the application of reason- 

 ing to the phenomena of nature. Only 

 last year you heard Professor Love in his 

 presidential address treat of the mundane 

 question of the shape of the earth and 

 etherealize the grim actualities with the 

 magic of his spherical harmonies. Year by 

 year, in every one of the subjects in which 

 the practical world is immediately inter- 

 ested, active students, whether public of- 

 ficials, academic officials, or private en- 

 thusiasts, not only keep alight the sacred 

 flame but occasionally add to its brilliance ; 

 and all the new knowledge, from whence- 

 soever it comes, ought to be applied to the 

 service of the state. 



The actual volume of original contribu- 

 tions on these subjects is by no means in- 

 considerable. You are all aware that, some 

 years ago, the Royal Society initiated a 

 great international enterprise for the com- 

 pilation of a catalogue of scientific litera- 

 ture. I have been looking at the fifth an- 

 nual issue of the volume on "Meteor- 

 ology," including "Terrestrial Magnet- 

 ism." I may remark that the catalogue is 

 quite incomprehensibly eclectic as regards 

 official literature, but let that pass. I find 

 that, in the year that closed with July, 

 1907, 1,042 authors (not counting officers 

 and institutions as such) presented to the 

 world 2,131 papers on meteorology, 229 on 

 atmospheric electricity, and 180 on ter- 

 restrial magnetism. This will give some 

 idea of the annual growth in these sub- 

 jects, and may convince you that, after all 

 allowance is made for duplicate titles, for 

 papers of no importance, and for mere 

 sheets of figures published for purposes 

 of reference, there remains a bulk of litera- 



ture too large for any single individual to 

 cope with if he has anything else to do. 



If instead of confining ourselves to what 

 can be included in meteorology alone we 

 extend our view over the other allied sci- 

 ences, it would be necessary to take in 

 other volumes of the international cata- 

 logue, and there would be some overlap- 

 ping. I have taken instead the volume of 

 the Fortschritte der Physik for 1906, 

 which deals with ' ' Kosmische Physik. ' ' It 

 is edited by Professor Assmann, who adds 

 to his distinction as head of the Royal 

 Prussian Aeronautical Observatory of 

 Lindenberg that of an accomplished bibli- 

 ographer. In this volume are given ab- 

 stracts or titles of the papers published 

 during the year which can be regarded 

 as worthy of the attention of a physicist. 

 An. examination of the volume gives the 

 following numbers of the papers in the 

 different sections : 



Papers 



Astrophysics 222 



Meteorology 1,122 



Atmospheric electricity 135 



Geophysics : 



Geodetics 105 



Seismology and volcanic phenomena 256 

 Terrestrial magnetism and aurora . . 108 



Currents, tides and waves 46 



Inland hydrography 117 



Ice, glaciers and ice age 139 



Other papers 126 



897 

 Total 2,376 



I need hardly say that these 2,376 

 papers are not all English; in some of the 

 sections few of them are in that language, 

 and fewer still are British. If British 

 students, official and unofficial, are to 

 make the most of the operation of draw- 

 ing the angels down, they need help and 

 cooperation in dealing with this mass of 

 literature, in winnowing the important 

 from the unimportant, and in assimilating 

 that which makes for the real progress of 



