Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/687

Rh they need to prosecute the work proposed for them? They can obtain these through the influences of legislation, of educational boards, and of our higher institutions of learning. Members of educational boards especially should see that this new work be introduced and continually performed.

Here will naturally arise the question, What is being done in this line at Cornell University? Besides the general course in zoölogy, there are special courses pertaining to vertebrates and insects. In the anatomical department, the special anatomy of the domestic cat is worked up as a standard of comparison, and is followed by the anatomy of examples of the leading groups and of the domestic animals, while in the entomological department special attention is devoted to those insects which are most injurious or beneficial, or otherwise, of unusual interest. Our very complete collections illustrating these insects and their habits in all their stages of transformation exhibit almost everything pertaining to the subject, and are in glass cases where they can be studied at all times. Instruction is also given in the use of antidotes and other devices for opposing objectionable kinds. At the same time students may elect in any term special and advanced courses in—1. Economic entomology. 2. Systematic work on the classification of some group. 3. Comparative anatomy and histology of insects; or, 4. Comparative embryology and metamorphoses of insects or insect-biologies. These zoölogical studies are conducted with reference to their practical relations to the cultivation of crops, to the breeding and medical treatment of domestic animals, to human physiology and hygiene, and to the doctrines of evolution.

 

HE seventeenth century must be regarded as the most memorable in the history of science; our own age has been remarkable for the skillful application of scientific analysis, but it has not produced a Bacon and a Galileo, a Harvey and a Newton. Between 1600 and 1700 theoretical knowledge received an increase far outweighing in importance the sum total of what has been achieved between 1700 and the present time. The definitive acceptance of the true theory of the world, and its triumphant establishment on a basis of universal and harmonious law; the constitution of physiology as a science by the great discovery of the circulation of the blood; the vast stride made in mechanics by the clear recognition of the laws of motion; the knowledge of the fundamental truths relating to light and color; the foundation of the sciences of magnetism, electricity, and chemistry—are all due to that period. The nineteenth century is not more 