Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/864

 ; and that a special department of the society will be constituted a committee of ways and means to raise contributions and devise expedients for enlarging its usefulness.

But, though the American Association has not hitherto developed much financial skill, it is gratifying to note that it is making increasing efforts to excite public interest in its objects. Undoubtedly, the great impediment to scientific progress is popular ignorance, indifference, and lack of sympathy with the aims to which men of science are devoted. The energy, the culture, and the influence of the active classes of society are not sufficiently enlisted in behalf of this work. It is in the line of its legitimate duty for the Association to take advantage of its opportunities, as it yearly passes from city to city, to present the claims of science to the public in such a manner as to arouse enthusiasm in their behalf. Lectures to the people by able men on a variety of subjects might be easily provided for at the annual sessions, without any impairment of the legitimate work of the sections. The Saratoga meeting, we are glad to note, manifested a decided tendency to fall in with this policy. Besides the popular character of the addresses of the President and of the Vice-Presidents, advantage was taken of the opportunities afforded by the locality to give a public entertainment, both thoroughly scientific and of interest to all classes. An evening was given to the mineral waters, and three of the ablest scientific men present made addresses of great interest on the different aspects of the subject. Professor Chandler, who has analyzed most of the waters, spoke of their composition, properties, and the characters of the different springs, illustrating his remarks by appropriate experiments, and extensive tabular statements. Professor Hall, the distinguished New York geologist, took up the relation of the rock formations to these fountains, and dwelt upon the history of those disturbances in the strata which have given rise to this extensive group of mineral springs throughout a valley which yields a new water at every boring. Dr. Sterry Hunt followed, with a most interesting and impressive address on those ancient conditions and transformations of the earth's crust which explain the genesis of this class of waters. By his profound studies of geological chemistry he was enabled to throw much light on the nature and origin of mineral springs; and, like the speakers who preceded him, he deeply interested the large audience who listened to his admirable exposition. It was altogether a happy illustration of what it is possible for the Association to accomplish in the way of first-class popular work.

Another consideration is pertinent here from this general point of view. The predominant movement of scientific thought is toward subjects which take a powerful hold of the popular imagination. Biology is the great science of the latter half of the nineteenth century. The mathematics, physics, and chemistry—the exploration of inorganic nature of the past three hundred years—are but the preparation for entering upon the exhaustive original study of the science of life. There was long a belief in its impossibility, and something like a dread of engaging with it; but that period is now past, and the advanced scientific mind of the world has entered in earnest upon the multitudinous problems offered by living beings, from invisible creatures, revealed by the microscope, up to man and his complex social relations. Science has slowly but steadily approached those elevated vital questions in which all intelligent persons have an acknowledged concern, and how completely these questions are now in the ascendant is shown by the leading discussions in both the American and the British Associations for the Advancement of Science. President Marsh considered the history of