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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIII. No. 1106 



realize that we must "build the ladder by 

 which we rise." Each of us finds that he 

 is but one of a vast army of patient plod- 

 ders, seekers after truth. We become more 

 and more willing to do that which is close 

 at hand, to seize small opportunities as they 

 pass, rather than waste time looking for 

 the great opportunities of our dreams. 

 Darwin was one of our great speculative 

 philosophers, but his philosophy was 

 founded upon an amazing array of facts, 

 and his experience as an observer of de- 

 tails, especially that gained in his classic 

 taxonomic investigation of the barnacles, 

 contributed in no small degree to the 

 soundness of his philosophical judgment. 



Though the realm of botany, as a whole, 

 is too great for any one individual to com- 

 prehend all its branches, and each must 

 confine himself to one or two branches, the 

 sympathy of each may and should extend 

 to every branch. Finally, the ideal of tax- 

 onomy is the utilization of the results ob- 

 tained by all the branches of botany; it is 

 the expression of the sum of the knowledge 

 to which all contribute ; it is the philosophy 

 of botany in that it correlates the parts 

 into a harmonious and ever growing whole. 

 A. S. Hitchcock 



V. S. Department of Agriculture 



THE CENTIGRADE THERMOMETER 



The Hon. Albert Johnson, member of Con- 

 gress from the third district of the state of 

 Washington, under date of January 12, ad- 

 dressed to members of the American Associa- 

 tion for the Advancement of Science the 

 letter which follows: 



A reprint of my speech ' ' Abolish the Fahrenheit 

 Thermometer," dealing with BiU H. E. 528, in- 

 troduced by me on December 6, 1915, is sent here- 

 with to all members of the American Association 

 for the Advancement of Science. 



The speech is followed by extracts from letters, 

 and I profit by this opportunity to express my sin- 

 cere thanks to the writers of those letters for the 



valuable aid which they have rendered. I request 

 that this acknowledgment be accepted in lieu of a 

 personal reply, which I am reluctantly compelled to 

 forego, owing to lack of time and clerical help. 



The labor and expense involved in this under- 

 taking will at best be considerable. Already the 

 expense for printing exceeds $150. While every 

 step should be taken with due deliberation, any 

 unnecessary delay would involve a regrettable in- 

 crease of labor and expense. If no action is taken 

 at this session of congress, much of the work will 

 have to be done over again at some other session. 

 No man that has any regard for his reputation 

 will care to say that the irrational, inconvenient 

 Fahrenheit scale ought to be maintained; the only 

 question is, how soon it should be abolished. An 

 amendment lengthening the transition period to 

 8 or 10 or 15 years may be worth considering, but 

 we should ill deserve our reputation as a progres- 

 sive nation if we delayed to set a date for the 

 abolition of a daily felt nuisance. As pointed out 

 by several correspondents, it ought to have been 

 done long ago. The change will necessarily be at- 

 tended with considerable inconvenience, but this 

 will not be lessened but increased by delay. We 

 have already earned enough ridicule by clinging 

 so long to the worst thermometric scale. 



Every man in a responsible position now has a 

 chance to gain credit by doing his best to facili- 

 tate the change. If any should feel tempted to 

 advocate delay, they ought to consider that they 

 would thereby gain not credit but discredit, be- 

 cause the change is sure to be made in the near 

 future. 



The Pan-American Scientific Congress has twice 

 recommended "the establishment of the Pan- 

 American Meteorological Service." Evidently 

 the first requisite for that purpose is the aban- 

 donment of the Fahrenheit scale. 



It appears that the government departments 

 have authority, under existing law, to discontinue 

 the use of the Fahrenheit scale. In publications 

 designed for the scientific public, many bureaus 

 do use the centigrade exclusively. However, as 

 regards publications intended for the general pub- 

 lic, it is evident that the departments would ex- 

 pose themselves to severe criticism if they made 

 the change without an express mandate from con- 

 gress. Congress evidently will not act except in 

 response to an unmistakable demand on the part 

 of the scientific public. 



All progressive scientists, therefore, should unite 

 to rid American science of this ' ' iron shirt of 



