of regular training, and the results were not adequate. Their ardor was probably also dampened by the inroad of professional scientists and artists. The disorders of the succeeding war for independence and republican rule were not conducive to the advance of arts and sciences.[1] The best treatise on mineralogy in Spanish was issued by Rio of this school. The first Spanish translation of Lavoisier's chemistry appeared at Mexico, and the Gacetas de Literatura of the learned Alzate, begun in 1788, form no mean index to the growing taste, as specified in the varied philosophic and scientific subjects of its pages. The range of Alzate's studies was very wide, and he published numerous works of the highest value, among which may be mentioned two valuable contributions on cochineal culture and antiquities respectively. Also a number of miscellaneous writings, wherein are noticeable his assaults on the vicious and old-fashioned methods and ideas of the time, which evoked no little enmity of as caustic though less generous a nature.
Alzate also attained honorable distinction in astronomy, though he was excelled by two contemporaries, Joaquin Velazquez Cárdenas y Leon, and Leon y Gama, the former ranking as the foremost geodetic observer of New Spain, and as chief promoter of the mining court and its school; and the latter hardly less prominent, though leaning, in addition to astronomy, to antiquarian subjects.[2] Astronomical science had not been wholly disregarded in earlier colonial days. Sigüenza y Góngora, in 1681, published a val-
- ↑ It is certain, however, that the study of natural history and physics, introduced at the mining school and elsewhere, led to a more general diffusion of scientific knowledge, shallow though it may have been; and Humboldt declares that in this respect New Spain surpassed many a district of the mother country. He comments on the chemical laboratory, geologic collections, and scientific instruments, and models of the mining school, and alludes to more than one private mineral cabinet.
- ↑ Less favored by fortune than his co-laborer, Velazquez, he had to sustain a constant struggle with stern necessities, and his efforts shine with greater lustre, as manifested in the several learned treatises from his pen, which have been published, notably the Descripcion Histórica y Cronológica de las dos Piedras, a learned dissertation on the Aztec calendar stone, discovered in 1790, which had remained hidden for nearly three centuries.
