August 28, 1885.] 



SCIENCE 



169 



slender exchequer. I have lain awake o' nights, like 

 my predecessors, reflecting how I should meet my 

 liabilities. And like them, no doubt, I find myself 

 poorer than when, a year ago, I contracted them. 

 You would scorn to receive in payment my promis- 

 sory notes or mortgages on my castles in Spain. You 

 will accept nothing but gold and silver, in bullion or 

 in coin; and that is what troubles me. 



There wei-e once halcyon days for orators: the 

 world of knowledge limited, and cano- 

 pied with rosy clouds of curious specu- 

 lation; the birds of fancy singing in 

 every bush; the dew of novelty glit- 

 tering on the fields. Science was 

 then an early morning stroll with 

 sympathetic friends, uncritical 

 and inexpert, to whom sugges- 

 tions were as good as gospel , 

 truths. Then, such a leun- / 

 ion as this to-night "was a 

 sort of picnic-party, at some 

 picturesque place on the 

 shore of the unknown, 

 hilarious and convivial. 



All that has passed 

 away. The sun of 

 science now rides high / 

 in heaven, and floods 

 the earth with hot 

 and dusty light. 

 What was once play 

 has turned to seri- 



and in their causes and consequences; weighing and 

 measuring all things; analyzing all things; collating, 

 comparing, and classifying; insisting upon investi- 

 gation at all points; formulating rigid laws; scofiing 

 at the unseen and unknowable; and transmuting the 

 fear of God and the hopes of heaven into a zeal for 

 the exact determination of the units of force, and a 

 confident expectation that railroads will soon traverse 

 all the unoccupied regions of the earth, and malleable 

 steel replace wood in the mechanic arts. 

 You represent this new world, grown so suddenly old, 

 learned, utilitarian, and critical. Your orators have a hard 

 time of it. 



Am I to be the mouthpiece of the outside world, setting 



forth in order what it has expected of you? its praise? 



its blame ? Xay, what care you for praise from unin- 



-r-piied lips? Or what care you for blame from the 



vulgar herd who comprehend neither your purposes 



nor your methods? 



Am I to be your mouthpiece to inform this out- 

 side world of what the community of science 

 which you partly represent has been about 

 the last twelve months, giving it such 

 a catalogue of facts discovered, and 

 theories established or improved, that 

 \ it shall stand amazed, and bless its 



stars, and worship? Then this 

 address would simply be a 

 grandiloquent stage-aside in 

 the drama of this meeting, 

 and no address to you. 



THE TACHT PURITAN, AFTER A PHOTOGRAPH BY STEBBINS. 



ous toil. Shadows are short. Objects present them- 

 selves in well-defined and separated shapes for criti- 

 cal examination. The few and early risers have 

 become a multitude. The tumult of occupations 

 distracts the studious observer. No one lends ear to 

 chit-chat. All are hurried. Critics abound. "Say 

 what you want, and go; or tell us something abso- 

 lutely true and useful," is the introduction to every 

 conversation. Morning, noon, and night, men de- 

 mand, not the agreeable, but the necessary. The 

 age of romance in science is part of the forgotten 

 past. The new world has grown gray-haired in fifty 

 years, intolerant of the irresponsibility, the sportive- 

 ness, the poetry, the music, the superstitions, the 

 affections, of its youth; dealing only in hard facts, 



Must I, then, speak to you as a fellow-worker in 

 science, contributing some fresh gift to our common 

 stock of truths ? But that would be better done, if 

 done at all, by reading a paper on the subject in the 

 section to which I properly belong. 



I did, indeed, hesitate a while before I rejected a 

 temptation to discuss before you this evening one or 

 two subjects on which I have reflected for many 

 years, — for instance, the important role which the 

 chemical solution of the limestone formations has 

 played in the grand drama of the topography of the 

 globe; the absolute inconstancy of the ocean-level; 

 the function of variable deposition in closed basins 

 in elevating the plane at which coal-vegetation re- 

 peated itself; the influence which anticlinals and 



