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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVI. No. 936 



stitution, who presided at Cambridge. He is 

 a hale and rather portly man, with a face al- 

 ternating between abstraction and a very 

 kindly consciousness, and looks as if he had a 

 mission to work for man another score of 

 years. He was bom an experimental philos- 

 opher, and so lived at Albany and Princeton, 

 until he was elected to his present adminis- 

 trative post. To his discoveries in electricity 

 the telegraph owes its practical development, 

 and we verily believe that with industry on 

 his part, and a fair chance thus to apply him- 

 seK, electrical science in all its fields might 

 have owed him more than it does to Faraday. 

 But this hope was extinguished under the 

 southern tower of the Smithsonian Institution. 

 There he is busy with what others, doubtless, 

 could do as well ; and thus is left undone what 

 none other could do at all. This is a new in- 

 stance of taking a man of proved abilities in 

 one sphere to do what belongs to another and 

 quite dissimilar one for which he has no birth- 

 mark. "We ought to learn that men are of 

 most value when doing that for which they 

 have a special faculty, and it is a fair ques- 

 tion whether Professor Henry, doing that for 

 which nature intended him, would not during 

 his life effect more in advancing science than 

 the Smithsonian Institution in its aggregate 

 existence is likely to do. High as this insti- 

 tution stands as a practical fact, and useful as 

 it is and will be, if it is to extinguish the ex- 

 perimental researches of Professor Henry, we 

 could fain say, give us back the man and let 

 the institution go. Professor Henry lacks but 

 mathematical training and energy of purpose 

 to do something greater than has yet been ac- 

 complished among us in the domain of phys- 

 ical science. Will he do so? is the question. 

 Facts within our knowledge assure us that this 

 must and will be. 



Next on the list of presidents comes Pro- 

 fessor A. D. Bache, the superintendent of the 

 Coast Survey, who presided at Charleston, 

 New Haven and Cincinnati. He is a fortu- 

 nate man in having found exactly the place 

 for which nature and training have best fitted 

 him. His quick eye, facile perception and ac- 

 tual attainments in science and in the knowl- 



edge of men make him the eminently able ad- 

 ministrative man which he is fully admitted 

 to be. Heading his class at West Point, en- 

 countering as an ofiicer of engineers the stern 

 actualities of engineering; as a professor and 

 college president in Philadelphia achieving 

 eminent success, he grew in that stature of 

 mental training and experience which makes 

 his eminence and usefulness in his present 

 post a natural result. It is a rare thing to 

 find so fortunate a combination of adminis- 

 trative and scientific talent, nor do we believe 

 the country possesses another man who could 

 so well thread the complications incident to 

 Professor Bache's position. He is clearly 

 Franklin's grandson. Whether, if permitted 

 the requisite leisure, he would strike out and 

 execute any great invention, discovery or re- 

 search, is a question not easily answered; for 

 though his original researches are highly 

 creditable, especially in discussing the tides, 

 they are, of course, only such as were com- 

 patible with his incessant life of action. The 

 deeply reflective element whence the greatest 

 achievements spring, has in him, as in most 

 of our best men, been kept in abeyance by the 

 intense externality and practicality of Amer- 

 ican life. 



Professor Louis Agassiz was the next presi- 

 dent, acting as such at the Albany meeting. 

 He is a man of highest genius, who does great 

 things quite naturally and yet with intense 

 labor. Take him all in all, he towers quite 

 above every living naturalist, and may not in- 

 aptly be called Cuvier Junior. His physique 

 is of the noblest kind, and his ample forehead 

 gives token of the mind within. He comes to 

 us from the Alps, an Alpine man. Trained 

 under Cuvier, and by him honored as resid- 

 uary legatee to a large field of research; he 

 has been an enthusiastic and most fruitful 

 laborer in ichthyology, paleontology, glacial 

 geology, animal classification, embryology, and 

 especially has he carried new light among the 

 inferior orders of animate beings. His work 

 on Fossil Fishes has recently been crowned 

 with the Cuvier medal, then given for the first 

 time, though founded by Cuvier, who died in 

 1832. He was professor of natural history in 



