of Townend Glover to investigate and report upon the habits of insects, injurious and beneficial to agriculture. In 1855 the chemical and botanical divisions were inaugurated.

David P. Holloway of Indiana, the thirteenth Commissioner of Patents, was instrumental in effecting a most important reform in the scientific administration of the government. In his first annual report, made in January, 1862, he advocated enthusiastically the creation of a Department of the Productive Arts, to be charged with the care of agriculture and all the other industrial interests of the country, and he was so far successful that, on May 15th, Congress established the Department of Agriculture. The first Commissioner was Isaac Newton, who had been for a year or more Superintendent of the Agricultural Division of the Patent Office. From 1862 to 1889 there were six Commissioners Newton (1862-67), Capron (1867-71), Watts (1871-77), Le Duc (1877-81), Loring (1881-85), and Coleman (1885-89), and under the administration of each important advances were made, and the value of the work became yearly greater. Buildings were erected; a chemical laboratory established; the departments of animal industry, economic ornithology and mammalogy, pomology, vegetable pathology, silk culture, microscopy, forestry, and experiment stations were added, and the system of publications greatly extended. The department, as now organized, is one of the most vigorous of our national scientific institutions, and with its powerful staff and its close affiliations with the forty-six State agricultural experiment stations, manned as they are by nearly four hundred trained investigators, it has possibilities for the future which can scarcely be overestimated.'

'The first agricultural “experiment station” under that specific designation in the United States was established at Middletown, Conn., in 1875, by the joint action of Mr. Orange Judd, the trustees of the university at Middletown, and the State Legislature, with Prof. W. O. Atwater, as director, and was located in the "Orange Judd Hall of Natural Science." The example was speedily followed elsewhere, so that in 1880 there were four, and in 1886 some seventeen of these institutions in fourteen States. The appropriation by Congress of $15,000 per annum to each of the States and Territories which

The term of the ninth President was too short to afford matter for comment. It should be mentioned, however, that General Harrison published, in Cincinnati in 1838, “A Discourse on the Aborigines of the Valley of the Ohio," and was the only President except Jefferson and John Quincy Adams, who has ever produced a treatise upon a scientific theme.

Mr. Tyler's administration was chiefly remarkable by reason of the formal and final establishment of the National Observatory, which, as we have seen, took place in 1842.

President Polk served from 1845 to 1849. During this period the Smithsonian Institution was organized. The Coast Survey had been reorganized in 1843-44 under the superintendency of Alexander Dallas Bache; while the Observatory, under the patronage of Mr. George Bancroft, as Secretary of the Navy, had been greatly strengthened and extended; and in 1845 was founded at Annapolis the Naval Academy, an institution among whose graduates are numbered many have established agricultural colleges, or agricultural departments of colleges, has led to the establishment of new stations or the increased development of stations previously established under State authority, so that there are to-day forty-six stations in the United States. Several of these have sub-stations working under their management. Every State has at least one station, several have two, one has three, and Dakota has set the Territories an example by establishing one within her boundaries.

These forty-six stations employ nearly 400 men in the prosecution of exper imental inquiry. The appropriation by the United States Government for the current year, for them and for the Office of Experiment Stations in this Department, is $600,000. The several States appropriate about $125,000 in addition, making the sum total of about $725,000 given from public funds, the present year, for the support of agricultural experiment stations in the United States. "Of all the scientific enterprises which the Government has undertaken,” wrote Secretary Coleman, "scarcely any other has impressed its value upon the people and their representatives in the State and national legislatures so speedily and so strongly as this. The rapid growth of an enterprise for elevating agriculture by the aid of science, its espousal by the United States Government, its development to its present dimensions in the short period of fourteen years, and, finally, the favor with which it is received by the public at large, are a striking illustration of the appreciation on the part of the American people of the wisdom and the usefulness of calling the highest science to the aid of the arts and industries of life."

men who have contributed materially to the advancement of science.

A little later, in 1848, in connection with the same movement, the position of Professor of Mathematics in the navy was dignified and improved, and their numbers limited with manifest advantage to the scientific service of the government.

During this and the succeeding administrations, governmental science, stimulated by Bache, Henry, and Maury, scientific administrators of a new and more vigorous type than had been previously known in Washington, rapidly advanced, and prior to 1861 the institutions then existing had made material progress.

Those of more recent growth, such as the Army Medical Museum, founded in 1862,' the Bureau of Education, founded in 1867, the Fish Commission, founded in 1870, the Bureau of Ethnology, founded in 1879,* although not less important than many of those already discussed, are so recent in origin that the events connected with their development have not passed into the domain of history.

The material results of the scientific work of the government during the past ten years undoubtedly surpass in extent all that had been accomplished during the previous hundred years of the independent existence of the nation. With this recent period the present paper has no concern, for it has been written from the standpoint of Carlyle, who, in "Sartor Resartus," states his belief that "in every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment."

It is nevertheless very encouraging to be assured that the attitude of our government toward scientific and educa

1 See J. S. Billings: "Medical Museums, with Special Reference to the Army Medical Museum at Washington." President's address, delivered before the Congress of American Physicians and Surgeons, September 20, 1888.

* See the eighteen annual reports of the Commission of Education.

'See G. Brown Goode: "The Status of the U. S. Fish Commission in 1884," etc. Washington, 1884.

* See the six annual reports of the Bureau, and the Smithsonian reports, 1879-88.

tional enterprises is every year becoming more and more in harmony with the hopes of the founders of our Republicand in accord with the views of such men as Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, John Adams, Madison, Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Gallatin, and Rush.

It is also encouraging to know that the national attitude toward science is the subject of constant approving comment in Europe. Perhaps the most significant recent utterance was that of Sir Lyon Playfair in his address before the British Association for the Advancement of Science, at the Aberdeen meeting.

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On September 14, 1859," he said "I sat on this platform and listened to the eloquent address and wise counsel of the Prince Consort. At one time a member of the household, it was my privilege to co-operate with this illustrious prince in many questions relating to the advancement of science. I naturally, therefore, turned to his presidential address to see whether I might not now continue those counsels which he then gave with all the breadth and comprehensiveness of his masterly speeches. I found, as I expected, a text for my own discourse in some pregnant remarks which he made upon the relation of science to the State. They are as follows: 'We may be justified in hoping . . . that the Legislature and the State will more and more recognise the claims of science to their attention, so that it may no longer require the begging-box, but speak to the State like a favoured child to its parent, sure of his paternal solicitude for its welfare; that the State will recognise in science one of its elements of strength and prosperity, to foster which the clearest dictates of selfinterest demand.'

"This opinion, in its broadest sense, means that the relations of science to the State should be made more intimate because the advance of science is needful to the public weal.

"The importance of promoting science as a duty of statecraft was well enough known to the ancients, especially to the Greeks and Arabs, but it ceased to be recognised in the dark ages, and was lost to sight during the revival of letters in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Germany and France, which are now in such active competition in promoting science, have only publicly acknowledged its national importance in recent times. Even in the last century, though France had its Lavoisier and Germany its Leibnitz, their Governments did not know the value of science. When the former was condemned to death in the Reign of Terror, a petition was presented to the rulers that his life might be spared for a few weeks in order that he might complete some important experiments, but the reply was, 'The Republic has no need of savants.' Earlier in the century the much-praised Frederick William of Prussia shouted with a loud voice, during a graduation ceremony in the University of Frankfort, 'An ounce of Mother-wit is worth a ton of university wisdom.' Both France and Germany are now ashamed of these utterances of

their rulers, and make energetic efforts to advance science with the aid of their national resources. More remarkable is it to see a young nation like the United States reserving 150,000,000 acres of national lands for the promotion of scientific education. In some respects this young country is in advance of all European nations in joining science to its administrative offices. Its scientific publications are an example to other Governments. The Minister of Agriculture is surrounded with a staff of botanists and chemists. The Home Secretary is aided by a special Scientific Commission to investigate the habits, migrations, and food of fishes, and the latter has at its disposal two specially constructed steamers of large tonnage.

"In the United Kingdom we are just beginning to understand the wisdom of Washington's farewell address to his countrymen when he said: 'Promote, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the increase and diffusion of knowledge; in proportion as the structure of a Government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.''