510 PRESIDENT BELL ON JAPAN 



scientific career and his philanthropic work in hehalf of the deaf 

 and dumb. The proceedings are reported at great length in the 

 Japan Daily Mail of November 8, and the following abstract of 

 the interesting address delivered by Dr Bell in responding to 

 the toast of his health is taken from the report in that journal. 

 Beginning with a graceful acknowledgment of the honor of which 

 he was that evening the recipient and an expression of the pleas- 

 ure he had derived from his long-looked-forward-to visit to that 

 marvelously progressive country, Dr Bell proceeded as follows : 



Hundreds of years have passed since Columbus, sailing westward, dis- 

 covered the land of the setting sun, and now we, looking seaward from 

 that land, see a new light upon the horizon, and ask ourselves what is 

 this strange effulgence, what is this novel luminary which begins to glow 

 in the firmament? That question has been present in our thoughts for 

 several years, and it is with no small satisfaction that I find myself able 

 to see your country more closely, and to observe the conditions that give 

 such earnest of a great future. An eminent man of science in America, 

 Professor Marsh, recently delivered a lecture on the teachings of geology, 

 and pointed out a very interesting fact. He said that on examining the 

 fauna of successive geological strata, a series of progressions was distinctly 

 visible. Thus the crocodile of one stratum was found to have a smaller 

 brain than the crocodile of the immediately superior stratum, and the 

 latter a smaller brain than the crocodile of the next stratum, and so on. 

 The same rule seems to apply to human beings. If we look back to the 

 pit-dwellers of primeval times we find a brain cavity perceptibly smaller 

 than that of man in later eras, and it may be confidently said that the 

 progress of the growth continues even to our own time. Well, gentlemen, 

 Professor Marsh concluded his lecture with a remarkable statement. It 

 was contained in a single, short sentence, but it was a very pregnant sen- 

 tence. He said, li It is worthy of note that the brain of the average 

 Japanese is larger than the brain of the average European." I do not 

 pause to draw any inferences, but I quote the fact as something of which 

 you may be proud — something which 3 T our recent history seems to illus- 

 trate. Small in stature, if you like, but large in brain; and during my 

 travels through your country I have been struck by the fact that nature 

 seems to have prepared for you a great and prosperous career. Every- 

 where I see long ranges of lofty mountains with comparatively narrow 

 planes lying between their feet and the coast line. That indicates a grand 

 gift. It indicates that your country should be the very home of electrical 

 enterprise, for such a geographical formation shows that water power is 

 available everywhere throughout the lowlands; that reservoirs of force 

 convertible into electric power can be formed at points within easy reach 

 of all your centers of commerce and industry, so that you are in the happy 

 position of being able to base the economy of your country on electricity ; 

 to drive your vehicles with electricity ; to substitute electricity for steam ; 

 to carry on your manufacturing enterprises by the agency of electricity. 

 One cannot exaggerate the value of this boon which nature has conferred 



