FIFTY YEARS OF AMERICAN SCIENCE. BY W. J. MC GEE. [W. J. McGee, geologist and ethnologist; born Dubuque county, Ia., April 17, 1853; self educated; studied Latin, astronomy, surveying, and higher mathematics while at work on a farm, 1863–73; land surveying and justice court practice, 1873-75; invented, patented, and manufactured agricultural implements, 1873-75; studied geology and archæology, 1877-81; made the most extensive geologic and topographic survey of northeastern Iowa ever executed, 1877-81; examined and reported on building stones of Iowa for tenth census, 1881-82; became attached to United States geological survey, and assumed charge of important divisions in 1885; surveyed and mapped 300,000 square miles in southeastern United States; compiled geologic maps of the United States and New York; investigated Charleston earthquake, 1886; explored Tiburon Island, 1894-95; ethnologist in charge of Bureau of American Ethnology, 1893-1903; president American anthropological association; acting president A. A. Á. S., 1897-98; chief of department of anthropology and ethnology, Louisianə Purchase Exposition.] Copyright 1898 by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. On April 2, 1840, eighteen American savants met in Philadelphia and organized themselves into "The American Society of Geologists." Within two years the association extended its field of activity, and added "and Naturalists" to its title. Still later other sciences were given hearing, and at a notable meeting held in Boston in 1847 it was decided to remodel the organization on the lines of a British association that had been a power in shaping intellectual progress for a quarter century. In accordance with this action, the leading scientific men of the country met in Philadelphia, September 20, 1848, and instituted "The American Association for the Advancement of Science." Such was the origin of the leading American scientific society, a distinctively American body, meant to increase and to diffuse exact knowledge among the people. Scientific progress, especially in a land of free institutions, is so closely interwoven with industrial and social progress that the advance of one cannot be traced without constant reference to the other. Indeed, the statement of our national progress during the past half century is little more than a summary of results and practical applications of scientific research. Fifty years ago our population was hardly more than twenty millions, now it is eighty millions; then our wealth was less than seven billion dollars. is eighty billions. At the beginning of 1848 the fifty two hundred and five miles of railway in the States, now there are far more than any other coun more than all Europe; nearly as many miles, indeed of the rest of the world put together. Some of the attended the first meeting of the association ma journey, or part of it, by stage coach or in the saddle met many a boy riding to the neighborhood mill wit of corn as grist and saddle, and the itinerant doctor ister on horseback, with his wife on a pillion behi passed by farmers swinging the back breaking c wielding the tedious hoe, while lusty horses grew fat ness; they caught glimpses of housewives spinning an and weaving with infinite pains the fabrics required their families; they followed trails so rough that th portation of produce to market multiplied its cost, rying back family supplies was a burden; everywh saw hard human toil, enlivened only by the cheer of freedom, and they did not even dream of devices nature should be made to furnish the means for subjugation. Most of the mails were carried s coaches and postboys; the telegraph was little m a toy; the telephone, the trolley car, and the t had not begun to shorten time and lengthen life; was regularly imported from Sheffield, and iron f way. The slow and uncertain commerce of inter gation was the pride of publicists, and Chicago population of twenty five thousand; a shallow settlement was flowing over the vast interior to brea the bluffs of the Missouri, though the pioneers st to pitch tents on the broad prairie lands, and cho the rugged and rocky woodlands skirting the wa as sites for homesteads; the fertile subhumid pla ten million buffalo feeding on their nutritious gra still mapped as the great American desert; th mountain region beyond was a mystical land, yi wildest and weirdest of travelers' tales; Californi Ultima Thule more remote in thought and interest than are Hawaii or even the Philippines to-day. Then, as now, the nation was in the throes of growing pains, acuter than now, because territorial expansion was more rapid; Texas had recently given its empire-an empire of barren breadths and bloody bandits, according to the critics and Florida had lately come to us from Spain; Iowa and Wisconsin had entered the family of states, and Oregon had become a troublesome territory; and the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo had just been approved, bringing California and New Mexico (with most of what is now Arizona) into our possession-adding the care of hopeless deserts and the control of treacherous tribes and an alien population to the duties of an overworked legislative and administrative government, and preparing the way for the witticism, "Mexico will be forgiven all if she will only take back her lands." In truth, there was danger, painfully manifest thirteen years later, of disruption through overgrowth of the local interests and provincialisms always straining our theoretic uniona danger happily removed forever a quarter century later by the railway and the telegraph, which gave a stronger unity than political faith or governmental doctrine. The progress of the nation during the half century is beyond parallel. By normal growth and peaceful absorption without foreign conquest the population has trebled, and the national wealth has increased tenfold. The subjugation of natural forces has proceeded at a higher rate, and the extension of knowledge and the diffusion of intelligence have gone forward more rapidly still. This advance, so great as to be grasped by few minds, is the marvel of human history. The world has moved forward as it never did before. Yet fully half of the progress of the world, during the last fifty years, has been wrought through the unprecedented energy of American enterprise and genius, guided by American science. It is to a great degree through special research that knowledge advances; yet it is by no means to be forgotten that the specialty is but a column in the fane of science, and that arcades and keystones and swelling dome hold higher places. Worthy has been the work of specialists in the extension of |