680 



SCIENCE. 



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



an early and liberal promoter of the hu- 

 manities. Eenewed homage should now 

 be given to the benefactor whose timely 

 and catholic bounty enriched this adolescent 

 college. Therefore, let us repeat once more 

 the verse of Alexander Pope and ascribe 

 ' to Berkeley, every virtue under heaven. ' 

 Gratitude to this great philosopher shall 

 not diminish our acknowledgments to that 

 long line of donors who have made the 

 library worthy of the university which has 

 grown up around it. 



Bibliographers and librarians are the ser- 

 vants of the temple — servi servorum academice 

 — and such as Edward C. Herrick, Henry 

 Stevens, "William F. Poole, and James 

 Hammond Trumbull, are rare men, con- 

 spicuous among the promoters of historical 

 research. 



In controversial periods the attitude of 

 Yale has been very serviceable to the ad- 

 vancement of truth. The Copernican cos- 

 mography was probably accepted from the 

 beginning, although elsewhere the Ptole- 

 maic conceptions of the universe main- 

 tained their supremacy, and the notes 

 which Eector Pierson made on physics when 

 he was a student in Harvard come 'be- 

 tween the Ptolemaic theory and the JSTew- 

 tonian' (Dexter). "When geology became 

 a science, its discoveries were thought to be 

 in conflict with the teachings of the scrip- 

 ture. Eidicule answered the arguments of 

 science, and opprobrium was thrown upon 

 the students of nature. Brave Silliman 

 stood firm in the defense of geology, and 

 although some of the bastions on which he 

 relied became untenable, the keep never 

 surrendered, the flag was never lowered. 

 "When the modern conceptions of evolution 

 were brought forward by Darwin, "Wallace 

 and their allies, when conservatists dreaded 

 and denounced the new interpretation of 

 the natural world, the wise and cautious 

 utterances of Dana at first dissipated all 

 apprehensions of danger, and then accepted 



in the main the conclusions of the new 

 biological school. The graduates who came 

 under his influence were never frightened 

 by chimseras. Marsh's expeditions to the 

 Rocky Mountains, and his marvelous dis- 

 coveries of ancient life, made the Peabody 

 Museum an important repository of geo- 

 logical testimony to the truth of evolu- 

 tion. 



I remember the surprise of Huxley in 

 1875 when, at a dinner of the X Club in 

 London, I told him of Marsh's discovery of 

 the fossil horse. In the following year, the 

 great English naturalist came to New Haven 

 to see in the Peabody Museum that of which 

 he had heard and read. In his lectures at 

 New York he soon described the work of 

 Marsh, and subsequently referred to its im- 

 portant bearings. 



Scant justice has been done in this dis- 

 course to the sciences promoted at Yale — 

 and the deficiency is the more apparent 

 when I think of the men now living whose 

 work has been precluded from our scope. 

 The next centennial discourse will do jus- 

 tice to them. Among the departed whose 

 careers were made outside the walls of Yale, 

 Percival, the geologist of Connecticut and 

 Wisconsin ; J. D. Whitney, the geologist 

 of California ; Chauvenet, the mathemati- 

 cian ; Hubbard, the astronomer ; SuUivant, 

 the chief authority in mosses as Eaton is in 

 ferns ; F. A. P. Barnard, the accomplished 

 president of Columbia ; Eli Whitney, the 

 inventor of the cotton-gin, and S. F. B. 

 Morse, whose name is familiar from its re- 

 lation to the electric telegraph — are espe- 

 cially entitled to honorable mention in this 

 jubilee. So is a much older graduate, 

 David Bushnell, the inventor of submarine 

 explosives — the precursor of the modern 

 torpedists. 



There is a good deal to think about in 

 the annals of Yale. It is not a perfect 

 record. Deficiencies, errors, failures are 

 met with from time to time — such as are 



