Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 65.djvu/476

472 exigencies of his important duties at home prevent his attendance, a result which now seems unlikely. Baron d'Estournelles De Constant, the leader of the arbitration group in the French Chamber of Deputies, whose party has achieved so splendid a triumph through the completion of an arbitration treaty between France and England, is to deliver the principal address in the section of international law. Signor Attilio Brunialti, councillor of state, at Rome, will be the principal speaker on the subject of constitutional law. The history of the christian church will be treated by Professor Jean Réville, of the faculty of protestant theology at the University of Paris, and also by Professor Harnack, of the University of Berlin. Other foreign speakers in the division of historical sciences are Professor Ettore Pais, director of the National Museum of Antiquities at Naples, Professor Arminius Vambéry, the Asiatic traveler and oriental scholar of the University of Budapest, and Professor Henri Cordier, of Paris.

The sections of biology and medicine are especially strong. Among the expected foreign speakers are Professors Hugo De Vries, of Amsterdam; Oskar Drude, of Dresden; Alfred Giard and Yves Delage, of the Sorbonne; Sir Ronald Ross, of Liverpool, and Professor Celli, of Rome, the two last being leaders in discovering the causes of malaria. Sir Lauder Brunton, of London, Professor Kitasato of Japan, the eminent bacteriologist, Sir Felix Semon, physician extraordinary to the King, and Professor Escherich, of Vienna, are among the foreign medical men. Professor Hugo de Vries will treat the subject of the origin of races, while Wiessner, Drude, Giard, Fürbringer and Waldeyer will represent their several branches.

Our mathematicians will be afforded an opportunity to meet a brilliant trio from the French Academy of Science,—Darboux, Poincaré and Picard. Our astronomers will greet with warmth Dr. Backlund, director of the Pulkowa Observatory and Professors Kapteyn and Turner. Sir William Ramsay and Professors Moissan and Van't Hoff will be among the speakers on chemistry. Professor Arrhenius is to set forth his new and striking views on the more mysterious phenomena of cosmical physics, and Sir John Murray will be the principal speaker in the section of oceanography.

That every specialist in research will derive both pleasure and profit by withdrawing his attempts for a brief period from his own province and listening to what his fellow investigators in widely different specialties have to say in regard to the problems and relations of their several fields of study is too obvious to need enforcement. But we should err in confining the benefits thus arising to actual suggestions. We must recognize the historic fact that modern science really began, not with investigations, but with the ideas which were necessary to the beginnings of investigation. Even to-day an