Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/866

846 to those—and to-day they seem to be the multitude—who look to the Government and the Legislature for their salvation in all things; but not mysterious to those who believe that the heaping of functions on the state is the very canker-worm of liberty and progress.

recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at Cleveland appears to have been a very satisfactory one. Many circumstances seem to have contributed to its success. The weather was favorable. The members came prepared with papers which were, for the most part, either in their scientific character or their practical bearing, worthy of the name of the Association. And the place of meeting was happily chosen. It had been thirty-five years since the Association met before in Cleveland, and during the interval the city had enjoyed a tenfold growth and development, which, as President Staley pointed out in his welcoming address, was, to a large extent, owing to the advance of science and its applications in the arts and in manufactures. "It would be difficult," the speaker added, "to find a city in which a larger proportion of the inhabitants are interested, directly or indirectly, in pursuits which depend upon scientific methods and processes." The people showed, by their attendance upon the meetings, by their treatment of the members of the Association, and by the avidity with which they read the unusually full newspaper reports of the proceedings, that they appreciated and enjoyed the privilege of having such a body among them. In these points they set an example to some cities of much larger proportions and pretensions.

The wonderful achievements of science, as illustrated by the work of the Association, and the industrial development of Cleveland, were the theme of President Staley's welcoming address. The speaker happily illustrated these wonders by introducing the figure of a citizen of Cleveland, who, meeting in the East a Persian story-teller of the Arabian Nights pattern, should easily defeat him in a game of capping stories by simply relating what he saw actually going on every day in the factories and workshops of his native place. The same topic was touched upon from another direction in President Powell's opening address, in which he indicated the innumerable fields of research that were represented in the membership of the Association.

The address of retiring President Langley, which was made at the evening session of the first day, was probably suggested by his own researches, and bore upon the history of the doctrine of radiant energy; while the speaker could not prognosticate the future of this doctrine for any distance in advance, he suggested, as a problem awaiting more immediate solution, the relation between temperature and radiation. The vice-presidential addresses bore the usual relations of such papers to the special departments in which their several sections were concerned. Prof. Stone, in astronomy, discussed the confirmation which Newton's theory of gravitation had received from studies in that science. Prof. Michelson, in physics, described his experiments to devise a standard of measurement from light waves. Prof. Monroe explained what light the investigation of chemical compounds casts upon the doctrine of evolution. Prof. Cook, in geology, insisted upon the indispensable importance of American geology to the completeness of the science, and to the construction of a systematic and adequate nomenclature. Prof. Eiley, in biology, who seems to have been exceptionally happy in his audience, traced the progress and establishment of the doctrine of evolution. Dr. Abbott, in anthropology, reviewed