Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 2.djvu/668

648 union of the several States, a large demand was made for a certain degree of practical astronomical knowledge in determining the boundaries of the different States, and Territories; and, later, the establishment of the Coast Survey, and an Engineering Bureau, has tended to keep up an interest in investigations relative to these subjects. The wide extent of our national domain, and the gigantic scale on which its geological formations are presented, have served as the basis of valuable contributions to geology, mineralogy, botany, and zoology. The contributions that have been made within the last forty years to meteorology, especially in the simultaneous observations over the large extent of our country, and the subsequent comparison of results, have materially assisted in developing the laws of storms, and have almost advanced meteorology to the character of an exact science. While there have been no especial facilities for prosecuting chemistry or physics, yet American researches in these lines have not been un-fruitful of results worthy of a place in the history of science.

But whatever may be said as regards the value of the contributions of this country to the scientific knowledge of the day, it must be admitted that there is a great popular craving among us for a knowledge of the results of scientific investigation, and that in no other part of the world could Prof. Tyndall have been more highly appreciated or more enthusiastically welcomed.

It must be to him a source of high gratification to have his sympathies so widely extended, and his kindly feelings so warmly reciprocated. There is a spirit of improvement awakened in this country in regard to scientific investigation which I doubt not will be stimulated into more active exercise by the visit of our illustrious friend, which will induce men who, by the exercise of peculiar talents, have accumulated wealth, to endow institutions for the special cultivation of scientific investigation, and to set apart with liberal support as the priests or interpreters of Nature, those who by special mental endowment are capable of benefiting their fellow-men by the discovery of new principles.

We trust the time is not far distant when the grand philosophical vision of the father of modern science, which has waited so long for its fulfilment, will be realized, "by the union and coöperation of all in building up and perfecting that House of Solomon" (as Bacon quaintly termed it), "the end of which is the knowledge of causes and of the secret motions of things, and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire to the effecting of all things possible."

While we have endeavored to show that abstract science is entitled to high appreciation and liberal support, we do not claim for it the power of solving questions belonging to other realms of thought. What we would claim for it, however, in addition to liberal appreciation and support, is, that it may be untrammelled in its investigations so long as they are conducted with the single intention of the