Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/210

206 these was in administration, and the national government owes much to his skill and wisdom. Another is in his numerous popular works and textbooks. He was a master of clear thinking and good English—witness, for example, the series of papers on "The Stars," published in this journal in 1900. He was also the author of standard works on political economy and of a great number of articles, addresses and papers dealing with the problems of science over a very wide range.

It is needless to tell here of the honors conferred upon Newcomb. He was elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at an early age. Honorary degrees and honorary membership in academies were heaped upon him. To be one of the eight foreign associates of the Paris Academy of Sciences is perhaps the highest recognition that can be given in the scientific world. It had not been awarded to an American since Franklin.

The centenary of the birth of Charles Darwin coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of "The Origin of Species," has been adequately celebrated in the United States, as recounted in the April issue of this journal, which was itself a Darwin memorial number. It is, however, fitting that the principal commemoration should be held in Great Britain and at the University of Cambridge. Darwin, it is true, held no academic position and was not greatly influenced by his work as an undergraduate at Cambridge. He said later that his "time was wasted as far as his academic studies were concerned"; but he could also say: "the three years I spent at Cambridge were the most joyful of my happy life." The part often played by a college in the future life of a student through the friends and associations there formed is well illustrated in the case of Darwin. He became interested in collecting beetles through his cousin, W. Darwin Fox, also a student of Christ's College, and through Henslow, the eminent botanist, and it was through the latter that he was led to undertake the voyage on the Beagle. This was Darwin's true university course, and it is difficult to imagine just what he would have done in the world had it not been for the circumstances,