Page:In Memoriam. Matthew Fontaine Maury.djvu/20

 West, and this again in connection with foreign commerce by his familiar pathways on the sea; the perfecting of a system of observations and reports on the crops of the world, tending, to reduce the fluctuations, and to destroy the facilities of trade in the staple productions of agriculture, which indeed was but an extension of what he years ago proposed as a complement of his sea work, and which is to-day measurably represented in the operation of that division of the public service which has for its special object the benefit of agriculture and commerce—such were the aims, noble in simplicity, grand in execution, which engaged the mind of M

The benefits conferred upon mankind by M cannot be measured by any estimate of their pecuniary value, great as that value may be. If we include the general gain to civilization, by increased facilities of communication between widely separated parts of the earth, we shall not then have the measure of his work. Ranking higher than these are the moral results of his teaching. The directions by which seamen were enabled to apply the principles and laws which his genius had wrought out of the vast mass of material which, from all parts of the world,