Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/520

Scientific aptitudes have to my knowledge appeared among the negroes not infrequently. Among negroes who have actually achieved a degree of eminence in scientific research are the late L. A. Willson, of Cleveland, Ohio; T. McC. Stewart, Jr., of New York city; Frederick Hemmings, of Boston; and Dr. S. C. Fuller, of Westboro', Mass. Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, of Atlanta University, has made two solid contributions to descriptive sociology, 'The Supression of the Slave Trade' and 'The Philadelphia Negro.' Dr. Kelly Miller, of Howard University, has made important mathematical researches. Professor Hugh M. Browne, of Baltimore, is an eminent physicist. Professor George A. Towns, of Atlanta, has written a valuable theory of aesthetics; Professor Ferris, of Cambridge, is now engaged in writing a book on metaphysics. Our Professor Carver, of Tuskegee, has done something in biology. There is frequently noticeable among our students at Tuskegee the scientific attitude and spirit. (Litt., April 6, 1902.)

It should be added that Professor C. H. Turner has done important work on fresh-water Crustacea.

Of course the custom of classing as 'colored' all those who have any negro blood makes it difficult to ascertain the possibilities of talent resident in the negro blood itself. I suppose that most of those above mentioned are of mixed blood, but I have no exact information.

Returning to our birth-statistics of zoologists, we may proceed to discuss the native-born. These people are the descendants of early immigrants who showed little or no scientific ability, doubtless for such reasons as we have already discussed. The tremendous increase of intellectual activity in Europe and America during the last century and a half shows what possibilities may lie unsuspected in a people; for no biologist can suppose that the stock itself has greatly changed in so short a period. The same may be said concerning the recent intellectual awakening of the Japanese, though no doubt these people formerly employed their minds in ways overlooked because unintelligible to Europeans. It seems wonderful to us to-day to receive monthly an entomological journal printed in Japanese and to find some of the best work in biology coming from natives of that country. Who knows but that we ourselves, great as has been our progress, are capable like the Japanese of yet other new births, into fields of intellectual activity hardly yet suspected to exist?

I have classified the native-born zoologists by the states of their birth. New York is easily in the lead, with Massachusetts a good second, Illinois third, Ohio fourth, Connecticut fifth. The more prominent names are as follows:

New York.—Beecher, Bigelow, Birge, Call, Casey, J. M. Clarke, O. F. Cook, B. Dean, J. Dwight, Dyar, Elliot, Gill, B. S. Jordan, Mearns, Merriam, G. S. Miller, Miss Eathbun, Shufeldt, Slingerland, J. B. Smith, Walcott, Ward, Whitfield, Winchell, J. B. Woodworth.

Massachusetts.—J. A. Allen, Beal, Brewster, Dall, Felt, Hitchcock, Lucas, C. D. Marsh, Minot, Scudder, Thayer, Thorndike, Williston. How few of these are to-day identified with Massachusetts!