504 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVI. No. 929 



ieal Survey and the State Museum in 1904 

 Dr. John Mason Clarke inherited positions 

 rich in traditions and undertook no light 

 task. Long years of experience as an as- 

 sistant to James Hall had given him a wide 

 and thorough knowledge of the state's geol- 

 ogy and paleontology, and, quite as im- 

 portant, of its legislators. Although a 

 paleontologist and stratigrapher himself, 

 all the other lines centering in his office 

 have received his support. While the great 

 monographs on the faunas of the Devonian, 

 the graptolites, the ancient sponges and 

 the eurypterids have seen the light, the 

 areal geology has had its full recognition, 

 the ancient crystallines have received no 

 less attention than the fossiliferous beds 

 and the mineral resources. Botany, zool- 

 ogy and archeology have had their due and 

 are well represented in the publications of 

 the state museum. The geologic map of the 

 state has progressed on the topographic 

 scale of one mile to the inch, so far that al- 

 most one half of the area of the state has 

 been plotted in minute detail. The mu- 

 seum has kept in touch with and published 

 the geological results obtained in connec- 

 tion with the development of the aqueduct. 

 It has availed itself of the cooperation of 

 many of the most able specialists in the 

 state. 



It is now the great opportunity of our 

 state not only to maintain liberally a mu- 

 seum the purpose of which is to present in 

 fulness the character of its natural re- 

 sources, but to furnish the State Depart- 

 ment of Education with the means of 

 spreading the work of the museum in pop- 

 ularized form throughout the schools of the 

 state. The appropriations have doubled 

 in recent years, now amounting approxi- 

 mately to $40,000, but they are insufficient 

 to develop a museum worthy of the dignity 

 of the state of New York either along the 



lines of exhibition or those of public educa- 

 tion. 



The truest measure of civilization and of 

 intelligence in the government of a state is 

 the support of its institutions of science, 

 for the science of our time in its truest 

 sense is not the opinions or prejudices, the 

 strength or weakness of its votaries, it is 

 the sum of our knowledge of nature with 

 its infinite applications to state welfare, to 

 state progress and to the distribution of 

 human happiness. 



Henby Faiefield Osborn 



American Museum op Natural History 



ADDBESS OF PRESIDENT TAFT AT TEE 

 FIFTEENTH INTERNATIONAL CON- 

 GRESS ON HYGIENE AND 

 DEMOGRAPHY^ 



It is my pleasant and honorable duty, on 

 behalf of the people and the government of 

 the United States, to welcome this great con- 

 gress to Washington. 



" Prevention is better than cure." The 

 science of medicine and surgery has made 

 wonderful growths in the last forty years, but 

 in that time it would seem as if the science 

 of sanitation, of hygiene and of preventive 

 medicine had come into being from nothing. 

 And now the two, prevention and cure, 

 through the intense energy, industry, applica- 

 tion, keen discrimination and high and en- 

 thusiastic aims of the benefactors of human 

 kind, who are now devoting their lives to re- 

 search, and the investigation of the cause of 

 disease, its transmission and its antidotes, are 

 proceeding, pari passu, with such rapidity 

 and success that in the next century we may 

 almost expect to find the equivalent of that 

 fountain of youth and perpetual life which 

 was sought for in this country by some of the 

 early discoverers. 



It is easy to make an error with reference 

 to the beginning of a great forward move- 

 ment by dating it from the time when the 



^ OflScial report of the address given at Conti- 

 nental Memorial Hall, Washington, D. C, Sep- 

 tember 23, 1912. 



