Annual Address by the President. 13 
earth and made our antipode our neighbors; how we have brought near 
the far off desert and made it to blossom and bear fruit and so have dou- 
bled the size of the habitable world; how ‘the continuous woods where 
rolled the Oregon and heard no sound save its own dashings’ now teems 
with happy life and resounds to the hum of wheels and the joyous cries 
of happy children; how the thought, inspiration, discovery, or learning 
of one is multiplied a million fold by the press and at once becomes the 
common property of the world; how the hours of labor are shortened so 
that all mankind may enjoy sufficient leisure to become learned and 
cultured if they will ; how the comforts of life which formerly could be 
enjoyed only by kings and princes are now available to every industri- 
ous citizen; how the causes and sources of disease have been discovered 
and largely eradicated so that sickness today is almost a crime; when 
we ponder on these marvelous achievements of one short century of crude 
empiricism in applying the discoveries of science, what may we not hope 
from the endless future with an intelligent direction given to the labors 
of those who seek to garner the fruit of all science and not only to know 
the law but to control its operation, to harness the very laws of nature to 
the car of human progress?” 
To us, as members of the Texas Academy of Science, the question of 
greatest inoment at present is how the influence of our organization may 
be extended so as to accomplish the greatest good for the State at large. 
It appears to me that somewhat of this object may be attained by bring- 
ing the workers in applied science into closer touch with the Academy 
and its objects. Within our great State the workers in pure science 
alone are few in number, but there is the nucleus of a small army of 
those engaged in intelligent applications of some phase of applied sci- 
ence, and if these could be brought to clearly understand the objects and 
purposes of the Academy many of them would align themselves with us. 
Within a few months our organization will have completed the first 
decade of its existence, but its membership is not a tenth of what it 
should be. Originating in January, 1891, chiefly through the efforts of 
a few broad minded men in the University of Texas, it has been kept 
alive so far chiefly by the efforts of these same men, or their successors 
and coadjutors, together with the efforts of a few of those engaged in 
educational work in kindred institutions and a few of the general work- 
ers in science throughout the State. Good has been accomplished in 
maintaining somewhat of a scientific interest among the few, but much 
more could and should be done, indeed, must be done before the Academy 
receives the recognition it deserves from the citizens of the State at 
large. 
There are great enterprises requiring the skill of the engineer now in 
progress, but’ this phase of the work of the applied scientist is' only at 
the beginning in this State. Railroad building in the past has been the 
