Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/74

66 that he used Delafield's hæmatoxyline solution, of which he gives the formula; that he began making his sections with a Thoma microtome, but later used a Schanze, as Prof. X needed the Thoma; the author's work was interrupted because he was called home on account of his father's illness; his father lived in Meyerstadt or Smithville. What have these and thousands of similar items to do with the plane of the first cleavage of the ovum, the origin of the centrosome, or the development of the notochord, or any other problem of embryology? I have not invented my illustrations; on the contrary, I have taken them from some of the best of recent embryological articles. Similar illustrations can be collected from recent literature of any branch of natural-history research.

So far as embryological literature is concerned, the French standard is certainly the lowest. Their verbosity is infinite, and one must read page after page for a single fact. Many of the French memoirs I have read are literally ten times too long for the matter. Next to the French come the Germans and ourselves—Americans—who, in the biological sciences, are disciples of the Germans. The best-written memoirs are the English, owing, I think, to Huxley's influence. Huxley has carried scientific writing to unsurpassed excellence, combining clearness and brevity in a marvelous way, and his pupils, Francis Balfour and Michael Foster, have invariably sustained a high literary standard. Their example has been all the more telling because literary art holds the same position in England that music holds in Germany and painting in France.

No doubt the ark of science will traverse the deluge of publication safely and land us on the Ararat of natural law, but I fear our Ararat will not appear until the deluge subsides.

But I must hasten to the second part of my address.

—The occasion does not permit me to refer to more than two or three professional traits.

The best that we gain from the pursuit of research is, I believe, our characteristic optimism. We are engaged in achieving results, and results of the most permanent and enduring quality. A business man may achieve a fortune; but time will dissipate it. A statesman may be the savior of a nation; but how long do nations live? Knowledge has no country, belongs to no class, but is the might of mankind, and it is mightier for what each of us has done. We have brought our stones, and they are built into the edifice and into its grandeur. My stone is a small one. It will certainly be forgotten that it is mine, nevertheless it will remain in place.

How different is the pessimism toward which literary men are