Our Retrospect. 



we have been doing, and that others know the same. From the 

 British and Kensington Museums, from various societies not only 

 in England but also upon the Continent, from all the prominent as- 

 sociations of our own land year after year comes the request for copies 

 of our Transactions. These societies feel the importance of our con- 

 tributions, and in making up their libraries they do not call any thing 

 complete that does not contain our volumes. Not that we profess to 

 offer any great and widely-renowned papers. The world may roll around 

 in its course for many more centuries before the Transactions of any 

 society will contain another Novum Organum or Principia. But in 

 our own sphere or district we gather up and put upon record much 

 that would otherwise be forgotten. The description of the skeleton 

 of an extinct species of quadruped, the fossil that supplies a missing 

 link in the history of the evolution of a fish or insect, the course and 

 distance of a more than ordinarily interesting meteor, or the calcula- 

 tion of the orbit of a comet deigning to appear only to our Observatory, 

 — all these we try to place upon our pages, side by side with any other 

 seemingly less important fact or discovery, not knowing how soon the 

 slightest record of its kind may grow into valuable service to the world. 

 We who can appreciate the close connection of the physical sciences 

 know that though our papers may lie upon library shelves unheeded 

 through centuries, until at last they fall to pieces through old age and 

 are lost forever, here and there may be a subject for which the world 

 some time may have need, and which it will exhume from the dust 

 with satisfaction and profit. The chemical discovery which will color 

 a liquid for mere purposes of iridescent beauty may at some future 

 time aid in the clarification of a prism which will unveil the secrets 

 of the sun; and some new application in smelting, designed simply to 

 give strength to a kitchen utensil in a scullion's charge, may hereafter 

 be found available in the casting of guns which will protect our sea- 

 coasts from ravage, or sink a navy of iron clads. 



I do not profess the knowledge or skill to show wherein the Tran- 

 sactions of the Institute have been of any immediate use, or have 

 quietly led the way to new discovery. There may be many such in- 

 stances or they may be very few. But I will mention at least one il- 

 lustration, as shown lately by Vice-President Colvin in his valuable 

 contribution upon " Coast Defenses," and in which he tells how the 

 great inventor Ericsson credits to a long-forgotten page of the Albany 

 Institute the conception of a turret-armed iron-clad. I cannot do 

 better than quote Mr. Colvin's own words, in which he had admirably 

 condensed the whole matter. 



"John Ericsson," he says, "in his account of the origin of the 



