2n% 
MiSSCf-PI 
George 
i-’Ar'EFl^ 
cxx 
The continual accession of new members is a matter of further congratu- 
lation. The provision made for the preservation and exhibition of your 
Museum should encourage on all hands zealous cooperation in collecting 
specimens, and a few years of such effort would in a great measure make 
good the disaster which overtook the Academy’s Museum in 1869. 
While affairs are thus prosperous within our organization, the cause in 
whose name we assemble. Science — and more especially Natural Science — 
is in a state of extraordinary prosperity. Never before in the history of 
the world have so many first-class minds devoted their energies to its pro- 
secution. Never before have brilliant discoveries followed in such rapid 
succession. Natural Science has from the first befriended the cause of 
humanity. By means of Science man has gained an empire over the 
powers of Nature, and the emancipation of the human race from want and 
suffering has been the result. The pursuit of Science in a free and disin- 
terested manner, with the sole view of eliciting truth, has rewarded its 
votaries with the meed of usefulness, besides the satisfaction of arriving 
at truth. The illustrations of this are matters of daily occurrence. Few 
persons who listened to the lectures of Tyndall on Sound, and saw his 
minute and painstaking experiments, made with a view to discover the 
rationale of the so-called “singing flames,” would have expected that from 
so whimsical an affair a useful invention would arise. Yet among the 
most valuable applications of Science to the Arts recently made, is an 
alarm-lamp which indicates to miners the presence of dangerous, inflam- 
mable gases in the mine. The vibration of the flame, acted on through 
wire gauze by the explosive gases, produces a sound varying in pitch and 
intensity according to the height and calibre of the lamp-chimney. 
The cultivation of Science for itself, as Tyndall informed us, is the great 
desideratum. No one can tell in advance which province of Science will 
prove the most useful in application. Free, disinterested investigation of 
Nature— the trivial manifestations offeree as well as the most gigantic— is 
the surest course to discover the truth, and it is also the method that will 
prove the most useful to the well-being of man. 
But the fruits of Science in giving to man the direct mastery over Nature 
are nowhere more desirable than to us who inhabit the valley of the Mis- 
sissippi. What opportunities to study the laws of mineral formation has 
the citizen of Missouri! What immediate fruits will reward the patient 
enthusiasm of the investigator! How much does the improvement of the 
Mississippi river to-day need the elaboration of a scientific theory respect- 
ing the deposit of alluvium by rivers ! A careful induction based on long 
and patient study of such deltas as those of the Ganges, the Nile, the 
Danube, the Rhine, and the Mississippi, would be worth to our commerce 
enough to pay for the endowment of all the scientific schools in this na- 
tion. The famous Vauban pronounced the bars at the mouth of rivers 
“ incorrigible.” But a thorough knowledge of the laws which control the 
transportation and deposition of the solid matter borne by these streams 
to the sea, and the action of the tides and waves upon their currents at 
Botanical 
cm copyright reserved garden 
