16 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 



the respiration of nitrous oxide, a substance due to chemical research. 

 It was ascertained that the inhalation of the vapor of ether, another 

 chemical product, produced a similar effect, and these facts, many 

 years afterwards, were applied by Jackson and Morton, in our own 

 country, for the purpose of producing insensibility to pain, and thus 

 to relieve an incalculable amount of human misery, and to ameliorate 

 in a measure the original curse to which our race has been subjected. 



Dr. Priestley, in the course of a laborious series of investigations 

 relative to the different kinds of air, subjected, on the 1st of August, 

 1774, to the heat of a burning lens (which is now, through the liber- 

 ality of one of his grandsons, the property of this institution) a 

 quantity of calcined mercury, and evolved from it a gas since known 

 by the name of oxygen, a discovery which led to a knowledge of the 

 composition of the atmosphere, and finally to the improvement of 

 almost the entire circle of the chemical arts. 



About the middle of the last century Franklin devoted his sagacious 

 mind to what was deemed by some of his friends a trifling pursuit — 

 the study of the phenomena produced by the friction of different 

 substances when rubbed together. But from this investigation he 

 deduced his admirable theory of electrical induction, and the fact 

 of the action of points at a distance, on which was founded the pro- 

 tection of buildings from lightning, and which, with the additional 

 discoveries of Yolta, Oersted, and others, has given to the world the 

 electrical telegraph. 



These are instances of investigations commenced without any idea 

 of immediate practical utility. They exemplify discoveries made 

 by men who studied science for its own sake, and received no other 

 reward than the consciousness of enlarging the bounds of human 

 thought, while it was left to others to gather a rich pecuniary har- 

 vest from what they had so effectually sown. 



"It is the destiny of the sciences," says Fontanelle, "which must 

 necessarily be in the hands of a few, that the utility of their progress 

 should be invisible to the greater part of mankind, especially if those 

 sciences are associated with unobtrusive pursuits. Let a greater 

 facility in using our navigable waters and opening new lines of com- 

 munication but once exist, simply because at present wo know vastly 

 better how to level the ground and construct locks and flood-gates — 

 what does it amount to ? The workmen have had their labors lightened, 

 but they themselves have not the least idea of the skill of the 



