what we can to extend the boundaries of human knowledge by utilizing existing institutions.
Gentlemen, your work begins, your aims are high; you seek to extend known forces and to discover and utilize new forces for the benefit of man. Than this there can scarcely be greater work. I wish you abundant success and venture to prophesy that through your efforts in cooperation with those of kindred societies in our' country, contributions to the advancement of the race through research, will compare in the near future not unfavorably with those of any other land. Again, I thank you.SCIENTIFIC WORK HERE AND ABROAD.
Mr. Carnegie expressly states in his trust deed that his chief purpose is 'to secure if possible for the United States of America leadership in the domain of discovery and the utilization of new forces for the benefit of man,' and this function of the institution naturally calls attention to the place now occupied by the United States in the world of science. In the January number of The North American Review, Mr. Carl Snyder complains that America is not doing its fair share of scientific work. In a much abler article in the following number of the same review, Professor Simon Newcomb gives more credit to American science, but entitles his article 'Conditions which discourage scientific work in America,' and dwells especially on the lack of appreciation shown by the general public, and especially by legislators, to scientific men and institutions. Other journals have discussed the question, the New York Independent remarking: "It must be acknowledged that in original contributions to knowledge the United States is not in the first rank with Germany, France and England, but rather with such countries as Russia, Italy, Sweden and Japan"
We take a more hopeful view of science in America than the authors mentioned. Mr. Snyder, for example, commits the obvious fallacy of comparing the productivity of the United States with that of all other nations combined. We can divide the intellectual world into seven groups not very unequal in population—Germany-Austria, Great Britain and its colonies, France and Belgium, The United States, Italy, Spain and Spanish America, Russia and a miscellaneous group, including Scandinavia, Holland and Japan. The scientific rank of these groups is nearly that of the order in which they are given, but even greater credit should be allowed to the German, French and English, owing to their smaller populations. The United States occupies pretty definitely the middle place, being outclassed by the three great intellectual nations, and surpassing any one of the three groups into which the other nations have been divided. In so far as this is correct, we do approximately our average share of scientific research, about one seventh of the work of the world.
It is quite possible that our contemporary position is somewhat better in work actually being accomplished than in reputation. A scientific man does not usually become eminent until ten or twenty years after his work has been accomplished, and the same would naturally hold for a nation. We are likely to think of Darwin, Pasteur or Helmholtz, and to reproach America for not having produced their equal. But when these men were born and educated the population of the United States was comparatively small, and its intellectual position was admittedly inferior. It is only within the past twenty-five years that true universities have developed in the United States, and positions have been opened that can be occupied by men carrying on scientific research. Those who first availed themselves of these opportunities are only forty or fifty years old, and while they are now doubtless doing their best work, it is not yet recog-
