782 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 411. 



souls of men should be lifted. The study 

 of natural science is alone able to do this, 

 but education through natural science for 

 the great mass of the people, even for the 

 select few called the distinguished men of 

 the country, has been quite impossible till 

 recently. I say that it is to engineers that 

 the world owes the possibility of this new 

 study becoming general. In our country 

 nearly all discoveries come from below. 

 The leaders of science, the inventors, re- 

 ceive from a thousand obscure sources the 

 germs of their great discoveries and in- 

 ventions. ^ATaen eveiy unit of the popula- 

 tion is familiar with scientific ideas our 

 leaders will not onlj'- be more numerous, 

 but thej^ will be individually greater. And 

 it is we, and not the schoobnasters, who 

 are familiarizing the people with a better 

 knowledge of nature. When men can 

 hardly take a step without seeing steam 

 engines and electro-motors and telegraphs 

 and telephones and steamships, with drain- 

 age and water works, with railways and 

 electric tramways and motor-ears; when 

 every shop-window is filled with the prod- 

 iicts of engineering enterprise, it is get- 

 ting rather difficult for people to have any 

 belief in evil spirits and witchcraft. 



All the heart-breaking preaching of en- 

 thusiasts in education would produce very 

 little eifect upon an old society like that 

 of England if it were not for the engineer. 

 He has produced peace. He is turning 

 the brown desert lands of the earth into 

 green pastures. He is producing that in- 

 tense competition among nations which 

 compels education. If England has always 

 been the last to begin reform, she has al- 

 ways been the most thorough and steadfast 

 of the nations on any reform when once 

 she has started on it. Education, peda- 

 gogy, is a progressive science ; and who am 

 I that I should say that the system of edu- 

 cation advocated by me is that which will 

 be found best for England? In school 



education of the average boy or man Eng- 

 land has as yet had practically no experi- 

 ence, for she has given no real thought to 

 it. Tet when she does, I feel that although 

 the Fiusbury scheme for engineers may 

 need great improvement, it contains the 

 germ of that system which must be adopted 

 by a race which has always learned through 

 trial and error, which has been led less by 

 abstract principles or abstract methods of 

 reasoning than any race known in history. 

 John Perry. 



IN MEMORY OF JOHN WE8LEY POWELL. 

 To THE Editor of Scieistce: 

 Dear Sir: 



It has for many years been the custom at the 

 Smithsonian Institution to hold a meeting of the 

 friends and associates of a member of the staff 

 who shall have passed away, not by the way of 

 portraying his life and ser'V'iees, but rather as an 

 immediate mark of respect. These proceedings 

 have usually been private, but I have thought 

 that the minutes of the meeting held on the day 

 of the funeral of Major Powell, so long and so 

 widely known in official and scientific circles and 

 an editor of your journal, should be made a matter 

 of public record, and I am transmitting them to 

 you in the hope that you may find a place for 

 them in Science. They are words of grief and 

 affection and were not intended as a memorial 

 of the life and work of Major Powell, which I 

 am expecting his friends and associates here in 

 Washington and elsewhere to portray later on. 

 Quite before Major Powell's work as an admin- 

 istrator and a scientific man, before his very great 

 achievements as an explorer, before the influence 

 he had in molding the work and, indeed, the lives, 

 of many scores of young men who came under his 

 influence, there was the man himself, one to be 

 loved and admired, no matter what his walk in 

 life had been. During years of association he had 

 won such an affection from me, and it is a com- . 

 forting thought, which I cherish, that this affec- 

 tion was returned. 



Very respectfully yours, 



S. P. Langlet, 

 Secretary. 



