RESULTS ACCOMPLISHED BY THE SOCIETY 91 



are those which have held the attention of our Fellows — work in pure 

 rather than in applied science; there has been no trenching upon the 

 field of the mining engineer. As a storehouse of fact and of broad, just 

 generalization, the volumes of our Bulletin are excelled by those of no 

 similar publication. 



We close our first decade justly gratified by success and full of hope 

 for the future. Some of those who led us and gave us reputation at the 

 beginning are no longer with us. Hall, Dana, and Winchell, the first 

 three Presidents, passed away in reverse order ; Cope, Cook, Sterry-Hunt, 

 Newberry, and a few others have gone from us, but the Society retains 

 its membership with changes unusuall}^ small, showing no ordinary de- 

 gree of physical force and esprit du corps on the part of its Fellows. As 

 we look back, we recognize how far this Society has been of service to us 

 as men. In not a few instances misunderstandings have been removed 

 and coldness or suspicion has been replaced by personal friendship. 

 American geologists are no longer a disorderly lot of irregulars march- 

 ing in awkward squads, but form a reasonably compact bod}', though as 

 individuals they may owe allegiance to Canada,the United States, Mexico, 

 or Brazil. Every one of us has felt the inspiriting influence of personal 

 contact. 



Relation of geological Work to the Public Welfare 



But our Society has to do with the world outside of itself and outside 

 of its immediate line of thought. It must have more to do with that 

 world in the future if the outcome for science is to be what it should be, 

 for the time is approaching rapidly when we must seek large sums for 

 aid in prosecuting our work. To retain the respect of the community 

 and to retain influence for good, we must be able to justify the existence of 

 a society devoted to investigation as distinguished from a]3 plication. The 

 question, " Cui bono ?" will be asked, and the answer cannot be avoided. 



This is a utilitarian age— not utilitarian as understood by those who 

 bemoan the decay of esthetic taste, or of those who feel that in the pass- 

 ing of Aristotle and Seneca there has come the loss of intellectual refine- 

 ment, or of those others who bewail the degeneracy of a generation which 

 has not produced a Kant, a Newton, an Aristotle, a Laplace, a Humboldt, 

 or an Agassiz — all regarding the decadence as due to the degrading in- 

 fluence of material development and overpowering commercial interests. 



These pessimists stand at a poor point of view, where the angle of 

 vision is harrowed by many lateral projections. One may say without 

 fear of successful contradiction that, in so far as actual knowledge is 

 concerned, students of our day receiving graduate degrees in the more 



XIV— Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., Vol. 10, 1898 



