58 DEFENCE OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA. 



DEFENCE OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA. 



In many of the addresses that have been made during the past summer, 

 on the Centennial occasion, the shortcomings of the United States in ex- 

 tending the boundaries of scientific knowledge, especially in the physical 

 and chemical departments, have been set forth. " We must acknowledge 

 with shame our inferiority to other people," says one. "We have done no- 

 thing," says another. Well, if all this be true, we ought perhaps look to 

 the condition of our colleges for an explanation. But we must not forget 

 that many of these humiliating accusations are made by persons who are 

 not of authority in the matter; who, because they are ignorant of what has 

 been done, think that nothing has been done. They mistake what is merely 

 a blank in their own information for a blank reality. In their alacrity to 

 depreciate the merit of their own country, a most unpatriotic alacrity, thej 

 would have us confess that for the last century we have been living on the 

 reputation of Franklin and his thunder-rod. 



Perhaps, then, we may without vaiJty recall some facts that may relieve 

 us in a measure from the weight of this heavy accusation. We have sent 

 out expeditions of exploration both to the Arctic and Antarctic seas. Wo 

 have submitted our own coast to an hydrographic and geodesic survey, not 

 excelled in exactness and extent by any similar works elsewhere. In the 

 accomplishment of this we have been compelled to solve many physical 

 problems of the greatest delicacy and highest importance, and we have 

 done it successfully. The measuring-rods with which the three great base- 

 lines of Maine, Long Island, Georgia, were determined, and their beautiful 

 mechanical appliances, have exacted the publicly-expressed admiration of 

 some of the greatest Euro]3ean philosophers, and the conduct of that sur- 

 vey their unstinted applause. We have instituted geological surveys of 

 many of our States and much of our Territories, and have been rewarded 

 not merely by manifold local benefits, but also by the higher honor of ex- 

 tending very greatly the boundaries of that noble science. At an enormous 

 annual cost we have maintained a meterological signal system, which I 

 think is not equaled and certainly is not surpassed in the world. Should it 

 be said that selfish interests have been mixed up with some of these under- 

 takings, we may demand whether there was any selfishness in the survey 

 of the Dead Sea? Was there any selfishness in that mission which a citizen 

 of New York sent to equatorial Africa for the finding and relief of Living- 

 stone, any in the astronomical expedition to South America, any in that to 

 the valley of the Amazon? Was there any in the sending out of parties 

 for the observation of the total eclipses of the sun? It was by American 

 astronomers that the true character of his corona was first determined. 

 Was there any in the seven expeditions that were dispatched for observing 

 the transit of Yenus? Was it not here that the bi-partition of Bela's come't 

 was first detected, here that the eighth satellite of Saturn was discovered, 

 here that the dusky ring of that planet, which had escaped the penetrating 

 eye of ilerschei and all the great European astronomers, was first seen? 

 "Was it not by an American telescope that the companion of Sirius, the 

 brightest star in the heavens, was revealed, and the mathematical predic- 

 tion of the cause of his perturbations verified? Was it not by a Yale College 

 professor that the showers of shooting-stars were first scientifically dis- 

 cussed, on the occasion of the grand American display of that meteoric 

 phenomenon in 1833? Did we not join the investigations respecting terres- 

 trial magnetism instituted by European governments at the suggestion of 

 Humboldt, and contribute our quota to the results obtained ? Did not the 

 Congress of the United States vote a money-grant to carry into effect the 



