6 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. I. No. 1. 



couraging the publication of dignified and 

 well illustrated reports upon the results of 

 scientific exploration and research. 



An illustration of the popular apprecia- 

 tion of knowledge in this country is to 

 be found in the gro^i;h of libraries, and 

 in the increasing volume of the stream of 

 books, new and old, which pass constantly 

 to the westward across the Atlantic. 



Augustine Birrell, M. P., in an addi'ess at 

 Dumfermline, Scotland, has presented some 

 most astounding statistics in regard to books 

 and libraries. He said that in the pubUc 

 libraries of Europe there are twentj^-one 

 million printed volumes ; in those of Aus- 

 tralia, one million more, while those of 

 America contain fifty millions — ^more than 

 twice as many as in all the rest of the 

 world.* 



The mere possession of books does not in 

 itself count for much, but the eagerness to 

 acquire the means of research, not books 

 only, but all other instruments and appli- 

 ances for intellectual progress, is very sig- 

 nificant. It should be remarked also that 

 this tendency, so far as the public at large 

 is concerned, has not become very evident 

 until within the last third of the present 

 century. 



There is a relationship still more funda- 

 mental between America and the advance of 

 science, to which only a passing allusion is 

 proper here. 



I refer to the reflex action of democratic 

 institutions upon those of the Old World — 

 to the influence of human freedom, practi- 

 cally demonstrated upon American soil, 

 upon the freedom of the people in our 

 parent lands. 



It was one thing for men like Priestley to 

 fly hither for personal liberty. It was quite 



*Pall Man Gazette, September, 1891. The esti- 

 mate is perliaps somewhat extreme, though the offi- 

 cial return of puhlic libraries in the United States 

 (excluding the other American republics and the col- 

 onies) show nearly 32,000,000 books in public libraries 

 of over one thousand Tolumes. 



another for Coleridge and Southey to plan 

 for the founding of a pantisocracj' on the 

 banks of the Susquehanna, and then to re- 

 main at home with Wordsworth and pro- 

 mote human freedom by their writings, or 

 for Price to denounce the oppression of the 

 American colonies as an outrage against 

 liberty, and thus to secure from the people 

 of London, who presented him with the 

 freedom of their city, an assurance of sym- 

 pathy among their English kinsmen, which 

 encouraged the colonists to declare then- in- 

 dependence. If, at the time of the Great 

 Exodus, the men who organized the Royal 

 Society of London had carried out their 

 purpose of removing in a body to Connecti- 

 cut, there to found an academy of sciences, 

 the higher learning would have been re- 

 tarded, not advanced. 



It is almost impossible for us to under- 

 stand the manner in which even now free- 

 dom of thought and action is burdened 

 in the Old World bj^ the weight of feudal 

 traditions and by the existence of class dis- 

 tinctions and privileges. Americans surely 

 do not understand, but that quick-witted 

 race of Orientals, the Japanese, have done 

 so from the very time when they ap- 

 plied themselves seriously to the task of 

 making then- OAvn what is best in the 

 civilization of the eircum-Atlantic peoples. 

 To England they went for ideas about 

 a navy and for lighthouses, to Germany 

 for a system of government, for military 

 insti-uction and for medicine, and to France 

 for a code of laws. In matters of edu- 

 cation, however, they have chosen from 

 the very start to be guided by Ameri- 

 cans ;* their keen perception teaching them 

 that, whatever may be its defects in de- 

 tail, the American educational plan is that 

 which in some form or other is certain 



* Their postal system, their telegrapliic code and 

 their meteorological ser^dce are also purely American 

 in origin, as well as sxich foreign agi'icultural methods 

 as they may have adopted. 



