SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. 191 



in scientific investigation among people who are not professors in colleges, brought 

 about mainly through the influence of such organizations as ours, and by the dis- 

 semination of popular scientific literature. There are departments of scientific 

 research, such as those of geology, botany, and entomology, that do not require 

 expensive apparatus, and all of these are full of interest and attraction for both 

 old and young, especially after a limited understanding of their principles is once 

 obtained. 



For instance, in the comparatively new science of geology, you will find 

 many people who are conversant wath its leading facts and principles, as they 

 have been demonstrated after the most laborious research. Even the school boy 

 of to-day has his limited collection of fossils and minerals. He is able to classify 

 them and explain as to what geological age his fossils and minerals represent. 

 He learns from them how the world was made, and, by analogy, how other 

 worlds are made. His mind expands to a conception of the forces of nature con- 

 stantly in operation to bring about the wonderful changes which mark the differ- 

 ent cosraical stages in the geologic calendar. The grand mystery of creation is 

 unfolded before him as he descends in the scale from the age of man down 

 through the ages of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fishes, invertebrates and 

 zooliths, to that of primordial vegetation, and thence to the azoic age, when no 

 life, animal or vegetable, could exist, and when the earth was indeed "without 

 form and void," as declared in that first great scientific essay, the authorship of 

 which is attributed to Moses. I refer especially to the science of geology, be- 

 cause, as now developed, it comprehends some knowledge of what have in the 

 past been treated as separate and distinct sciences, such as natural philosophy, 

 astronomy, chemistry, botany and others. 



No man can pursue geological investigation v^ithout learning something in 

 all these departments of science. He must be something of a natural philosopher 

 to ascertain and comprehend the causes, or forces, in nature which have resulted 

 in the formation of the varied strata of which the crust of the earth is made, for 

 he knows that every effect is the result of some adequate cause. He must know, 

 or learn, something of the laws which govern the movements of cosmical bodies, 

 among which our earth is but comparatively an atom in the universe. He will 

 necessarily learn of the elements, and the chemical combinations which exist in 

 the rocks and the minerals, of which the earth is composed. In the study of the 

 fossils, animal and vegetable, which he finds in the solid rocks, imprisoned in 

 what was but plastic matter so many long ages ago, perhaps millions of years, he 

 will compare the conditions and forms of ancient organic life with those now 

 existing, and which in turn, will leave traces of their history to be investigated 

 by the geologist of some far future age. He must, therefore, become more or 

 less familiar with the sciences known by the distinctive names of zoology, ento- 

 mology and botany. Geology is, indeed, a science which may be termed com- 

 posite, for it comprehends the elements of various other sciences. If you desire 

 a student to enrich his mind with an extensive range of scientific knowledge, 

 you. cannot do better than to interest him in geology. Its fundamental principles 



