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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIV. No. 357. 



ter of experiment and observation. It is 

 a unique history. For more than eighty 

 years this journal has been edited and pub- 

 lished by members of a single family — 

 three generations of them — with unrequited 

 sacrifices, unquestioned authority, unpar- 

 alleled success. In the profit and loss ac- 

 count, it appears that the college has never 

 contributed to the financial support, but it 

 has itself gained reputation from the fact 

 that throughout the world of science Silli- 

 man and Dana, successive editors from 

 the first volume have been known as 

 members of the faculty of Yale. I am 

 sure that no periodical, I am not sure that 

 any academy or university in the land has 

 had as strong an influence upon science as 

 the American Journal. 



A century has nearly passed since Benja- 

 min Silliman was chosen a professor and 

 went to Scotland, there to fit himself for 

 the duties of the chair. What a century 

 it has been ! The widespread interest among 

 our countrymen, in geology, mineralogy 

 and chemistry is due in no small degree to 

 his instructions here, and to the lectures 

 that he delivered in every city between 

 Boston and New Orleans. 



The Sheffield school celebrated three years 

 ago its semicentennial, and its useful ser- 

 vices were rehearsed by one who will not 

 venture to offer you a twice told tale. You 

 must, however, permit him to remind you 

 that fifty years ago the choice of studies 

 was but timidly permitted in the traditional 

 college, and that there was a strong demand 

 for courses less classical, more scientific 

 than were then offered. These wants the 

 school supplied without antagonism or ri- 

 valry, though not without the awakening of 

 alarm. It proved to be a rich addition to 

 the resources and the renown of Yale, as 

 every one admits. Its faculty was made up 

 chiefly of men whose ideas were broad, 

 whose distinction was acknowledged, whose 

 methods were approved, and this, with the 



munificent support of the benefactor whose 

 name the school has been proud to bear, 

 enabled Yale to stand forth as the ready, 

 wise and resolute promoter of education in 

 science. The alumni of the school are the 

 proofs of its success. 



Agricultural science in the United States 

 owes much to the influences which have 

 gone out from the Sheffield School. John 

 P, Norton, John A. Porter, Samuel W. 

 Johnson, William H. Brewer, each in his 

 own peculiar way, has rendered much ser- 

 vice. Johnson is preeminent, and in addi- 

 tion to his standing as a chemist, is honored 

 as one of the first and most persuasive advo- 

 cates of the experimental stations now 

 maintained, with the aid of the Govern- 

 ment, in every part of the country. We 

 cannot forget the value of ' the crops' — 

 we may forget how much their value has 

 been enhanced by the quiet, inconspicuous, 

 patient and acute observations of such men 

 as those whom I have named, the men be- 

 hind the men who stand behind the plow. 

 They are the followers in our generation of 

 Jared Eliot, the colonial advocate of agri- 

 cultural science. 



In the thirties there was an informal as- 

 sociation which may be called a voluntary 

 syndicate for the study of astronomy. Its 

 members were young men of talents, en- 

 thusiasm and genuine desire to advance 

 the bounds of human knowledge, but 

 their time was absorbed by various voca- 

 tions, and their apparatus seems lamentably 

 inadequate in these days of Lick and 

 Yerkes, of spectroscopes, heliometers and 

 photography. Yet we may truly claim that 

 the example and success of these Yale 

 brethren initiated that zeal for astronomical 

 research which distinguishes our country- 

 men. 



The Clark telescope, acquired in 1830, was 

 an excellent glass, though badly mounted, 

 and was then unsurpassed in the United 

 States. One of its earliest and noteworthy 



