Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 49.djvu/795

Rh of the Holy Land. Between 1830 and 1840 he contributed many valuable articles to Silliman's Journal.

Denison Olmsted became more widely known than either of the other pioneers in science. In the course of his work at Chapel Hill he gave the first geological description of the Deep River coal beds, and of the accompanying New Red sandstone, and referred the strata correctly to the same age with the Richmond coal beds and the Connecticut River sandstones. He began researches to determine the practicability of obtaining illuminating gas from cotton seed, but removed to New Haven before he had secured definite results. His Natural Philosophy, which is still a standard work, appeared in 1831, and his Astronomy, another important work, in 1839.

One wonders why such good beginnings should have borne so little fruit; but when we bear in mind that the institution which thus early fostered science had the greater part of its endowment fund swept away by the civil war, that the spirit of the South since that great event has been largely commercial and industrial, and that the income of the old university, from legislative appropriations, tuition fees, and endowment funds, is only forty-five thousand dollars, the wonder ceases.



SIDE from the highest "use of science," its satisfaction of man's intellectual wants and its influence upon his character, science has many "practical" values connected with its development. And it is to these "uses" of physiological research that we will confine attention, bearing in mind that we are addressing those who believe that, after duty, human health and happiness are the highest values in the world, and that the greatest evils in the world, after moral evil, are human suffering caused by disease and premature death.

How much "use" humanity has for help in these regards may be seen from a glance at vital statistics. "Of 1,000,000 people starting out in life, 407,000 will die, almost all from disease, before reaching the age of forty-one." We are losing yearly in this country over 302,806 children under five years of age. There certainly is no "use" in this.