Page:Science (journal) Volume 1 1883.djvu/12

 discoveries upon which many of the most important scientific inventions of the day rest, will be searched for in vain in scientific literature. The telegraph, the telephone, and the electric light are inventions which illustrate the fact now stated, in an eminent degree.

Another direction in which applied science has been developed in this country is found in the work done by the various government organizations. Is the weather-probability an important factor in the citizens' welfare? Immediately the signal service of the army is developed into a complete meteorological organization to collect data, and deduce forecasts. Is navigation to be made more safe, and internal boundaries more accurate? The coast and geodetic survey is created to carry on the most refined investigations upon standards of measure, and the various methods of applying them. Is the fishery question an important one to our commercial interests? A fish commission is organized, and under its direction the most elaborate investigations in vertebrate and invertebrate zoology are undertaken. Are the mineral lands of the government to be reported on? Geological surveys are commissioned to explore the public domain, and are clothed with ample power to make their work elaborate and exhaustive, and to embody their results in extended reports, not alone on the economic side, but including all the collateral branches of science. Is a knowledge of the properties of iron and steel of essential value in constructive engineering? Forthwith a special commission appears, charged with authority to execute the most refined chemical analyses and the most delicate physical tests upon these metals. Is there danger to agricultural interests from the depredation of insects? An entomological commission is appointed by Congress, with instructions to exhaust the resources of science for the protection of the crops. Moreover, besides the work done in this way, special investigations are always in progress under the direction of the departments; more especially those of war, of the navy, of the treasury, and of the interior; the services of the engineer-corps, in river and harbor improvements, for example, it is not easy to overestimate. In the end, it is true, these investigations have a practical object; but to attain this, in many cases, theoretical results are reached which are of the highest value to pure science.

It is no wonder, then, that, in the midst of such kindly appreciation by the intelligent and educated masses of our people,—an appreciation manifested alike by personal munificence and by governmental appropriation,—all the sciences, but especially those which reward appreciation by practical benefits, should have attained their present satisfactory development. Who can say to how large an extent the eminent position of practical astronomy in America is due to the unrivalled telescopes of Alvan Clark? The wonderful microscopic photographs of Woodward have been made possible only by the perfection to which Tolles has brought his object-glasses. The bolometer of Langley has given us new conceptions of sunlight; and the exquisite gratings of Rowland promise to do still greater things for us, in the same direction. In the experimental sciences especially, their unexampled advance is a continual testimony to the abundant return which practice has made for the benefits it has received from theory. While the scientific cynic may condemn the utilitarianism of our age, the more liberal man rejoices in it, since science is thereby the more advanced. He is thankful that the people view these scientific questions with the broadest liberalism; that they are not disposed to confine scientific inquiry to those investigations alone whose results are practical, but pour out their substance freely in aid of scientific work in all directions, theoretical as well as practical, pure as well as applied. This generous disposition toward scientific research, so characteristic of this country, has called forth unreserved commendation in Europe. The munificence of the gifts which have been made to science, both public and private, the liberality with which research has been endowed in America, have been the astonishment of