Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/491

Rh have already spoken, commenced the publication of a monthly journal entitled Anales de la Sociedad Científica Argentina, which appears to be a creditable periodical, and I trust will live and prosper.

There is also published in Buenos Ayres a semi-scientific journal, called the Anales de la Sociedad Mural Argentina.

That there is some taste among the general public for scientific reading is exhibited by the circumstance that the daily papers find it worth their while to frequently admit scientific articles.

was established in 1872, under the Sarmiento administration, our distinguished fellow-countryman, Dr. B. A. Gould, being placed in charge as director, which position he still holds. The observatory has done splendid work for science since its establishment. A series of maps of the heavens, from the pole to several degrees north of the equator, is in course of preparation under the title "Uranometria Argentina." It is expected to contain about 85,000 stars, 35,000 of which are now for the first time corrrectlycorrectly [sic] mapped. It is far advanced, and will be a monumental work when completed.

A meteorological office is also under Dr. Gould's supervision, and it is intended, when the arrangements now under way are completed, that the Argentine Republic shall also have her "Old Probabilities."

There is a school of mines in the republic, also two schools of agriculture. They, however, are too recently established to admit as yet of important results in their respective spheres.

March, 1876.



MERICA, when compared with other first-class nations, occupies a low position in science. For every research published in our country, at least fifty appear elsewhere. England, France, Germany, Austria, Russia, Italy, and Sweden, outrank its as producers of knowledge. Our original investigators in any department of learning may almost be counted on the fingers. Fifteen or twenty chemists and physicists, as many mathematicians and astronomers, and a somewhat larger number of zoologists, entomologists, botanists, and geologists, would fill out our meagre catalogue. Among these few discoverers a comparatively small proportion are of high rank. There may be in the United States, all told, twenty men of really notable scientific standing, although there is no one to compare in actual achievements with Sir William Thomson, Helmholtz, or Regnault. In geology we