Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/518

514 have been made on a large scale which seem fairly definite even though quantitative results can not at present be reached. The mulattoes may be assumed to have a heredity midway between negroes and whites, but their social environment is that of the negroes, and their performance corresponds with their social environment rather than with their heredity. Illegitimate children have perhaps a heredity as good as the average, but their performance falls far below the average. If performance were determined by heredity alone there might be expected to be among our thousand leading scientific men some forty mulattoes and some forty of illegitimate birth, whereas there is probably not one of either class.

At nearly the same time Agassiz came from abroad to Harvard and Brünnow to Michigan. We all know the list of distinguished naturalists trained under Agassiz—Brooks, Hyatt, Jordan, Lyman, Minot, Morse, Packard, Putnam, Scudder, Shaler, Verrill, Whitman, Wilder and many more, directly and indirectly. From Michigan have come, as is not so well known, one fourth of our most distinguished astronomers, including Abbe, Campbell, Comstock, Curtis, Doolittle, Hall, Hussey, Klotz, Leuschner, Payne, Schaeberle, Watson and Woodward. Certainly the coming of Agassiz and Brünnow was the real cause of greatly increased scientific productivity in America. Some, but not all, of those who worked under Agassiz would have become naturalists apart from his influence. The astronomers from Michigan must in the main be attributed to their environment. The men had the necessary ability, but if Brünnow had not gone to Michigan, they would not have become astronomers; if they had gone to the University of Pennsylvania, they would have been more likely to have become physicians than astronomers; if they had not gone to a university they would not have become scientific men.

It is certainly satisfactory if we can attribute the inferiority of scientific performance in America as compared with Germany, France and Great Britain to lack of opportunity rather than to lesser racial ability. In Germany scientific research has been made by the university rather than the reverse. In Great Britain also the universities have been potent, and, in addition, its leisure class has contributed greatly. Here prior to 1876 we had no university in which research work was adequately encouraged, and we have had no amateurs comparable to those of Great Britain. Professor Pickering found that of the 87 scientific men who were members of at least two foreign academies, 6 were Americans as compared with 17 from Prussia, 13 from England and 12 from France. In so far as our scientific production is 60 measured, the reference is to a generation ago, when our universities were only beginning to develop and research work was only beginning to be appreciated. But it is a striking fact that of the six distinguished